Ed Brill

This press release came out earlier today...WebSphere Portal, Lotus Domino, Lotus Quickr in a pan-government implementation...EUROCITIES, an organization connecting the local government employees in more than 140 large cities in over 30 European countries, has chosen IBM software to help its members...

Last week, my colleague Arthur Fontaine and I participated in the useful and engaging Lotus Technical Information and Education community open call. Our topic was "Future opportunities for Notes/Domino professionals", and we lead a good discussion on the topic. We know that with significant change...

Don't miss this podcast that Chris Miller and I did earlier today talking about the IamLUG, the user group event in St Louis coming up in ten days! was lucky to catch Ed Brill as he packed his bags and begin his walk to St Louis for IamLUG taking place Aug 2-3 2010. IBM is a Platinum sponsor of the...

Duffbert and others have picked up this story which appears on CIO.com.au as well as the author's own site, Delimiter:So Bergh sent a few members from his team over to a conference in Brisbane on how to move to Exchange 2010 to scope out the Microsoft platform -- check out the lay of the land and se...

Curses wifi-less airplane -- Darren beat me to it! Oh, and Chris Pepin did, too! Earlier today, IBM's 2nd app on the Apple iTunes app store went live -- a mobile viewer for LotusLive Meetings.Use the online meeting features of LotusLive Engage right from your iPhone! Join a Web meeting, chat with...

Well, today's the day. Notes/Domino 6.5, and thus the 6.x release of the product, have reached their end of service date. IBM promises to provide standard support for our commercial software for a minimum of five years; in the case of Notes/Domino 6.x, that support ran for seven and a half. Our s...

Provocative headline and some assertions you and I might not agree with, but Longhaus's Peter Carr takes a look at the Australian market and trends/transitions in cloud computing:Within this context, point victories within a holistic collaboration suite are no longer a basis for claiming market vict...

eWeek covered an IBM announcement made by Kevin Cavanaugh yesterday at Lotusphere Comes to You in South Africa:IBM, Canonical and Simmtronics Semiconductors have teamed up to deliver a netbook for emerging markets that features IBM cloud services and software for $190. The Simmbook will be availab...

Last week, I realized I hadn't been blogging too much about my day job recently...sort of that post-Lotusphere quiet that presumes we used up all the good news in Orlando and won't have anything more for a while. Of course, it's not at all quiet -- mostly, we come back from Lotusphere with a better...

Lotus Education is trying something new -- in-depth, detailed training classes delivered as live online webinars. The cost to attend is fairly inexpensive, yet the benefit is direct access to the experts and practitioners from across IBM Lotus to capture their real-world experiences. Four such web...

Alistair Rennie has been the general manager of Lotus software for about sixty days. In this podcast, recorded last week, Alistair debriefs on Lotusphere, talks about Project Vulcan, and looks ahead in the collaboration and productivity market. Well worth a 20 minute listen.LotusUserGroup.org caug...

These are some great sound bites from Mitch Cohen Darren Duke Andreas Hiller Steve Haase Thanks all for doing this video!...

Michael Sampson looks to me like he can see the future. Though he was never briefed on what was coming at Lotusphere 2010, in January, he published a white paper on the Lotus roadmap:Lotus Notes has been around for a long time. Since its release in 1989 it has always been viewed as a "different" pi...

Today at Lotusphere, we discussed plans and designs for updating LotusLive Notes in 2010. LotusLive Notes is the IBM-hosted Domino SaaS/cloud offering, which has been available in various forms for a few years. A major work-effort on my team and in our labs right now is to build an updated back-en...

Lotus Knows I'm probably stealing somebody's thunder, but there is so much news to cover this week, I thought I'd write about this one early. A long time ago, Lotus customers and prospects ooh-ed and aah-ed over the world of Notes/Domino solutions available in the printed "Notes and Domino Guide"....

This has really been an incredible year for Lotus events worldwide, but especially in Europe. We have had some incredible user group events that have invigorated or re-energized the community in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Poland, and other countries. We saw Lotusphere Comes to You sell o...

I discussed this earlier today at the Lotus Leadership Alliance...the press release should be out on Wednesday US time or later in the week:International Business Machines Corp. will try to sell a new package of low-priced computer desktop applications to companies and governments in Africa, challen...

Lotus knows how to win 'em....Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank has chosen to standardize on IBM Corp.'s Lotus collaboration software, IBM said Tuesday, displacing Microsoft Corp.'s rival SharePoint-based platform. U.S. Bank plans to roll out the Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections social Web platform for...

Sign up on Computerworld.com for this executive-level 8-page whitepaper on why Blackberry and Lotus go together...and use such advanced vocabulary!Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry smartphone, the undisputed market leader in the smartphone device arena, and IBM Lotus, the top developer of enterp...

This is a cool video on the value of Lotus Connections told in a very story-like manner....

Over the last several days, a number of new training and education opportunities have crossed my desk that I think are worthwhile... 1) A Quickr 8.2 for Domino "master class".This class is designed for individuals with Lotus Domino and Lotus Quickr for Domino implementation experience who wish to...

This week marks the second public milestone for the new "Lotus Knows" marketing campaign: The Lotus Knows IdeaJam. The Jam kicks off tomorrow morning US-time and will feature contributions from YOU! Hundreds of IBMers plan to participate, and many of our executives and thought leaders will be hos...

Everybody's got a little something up their sleeve for Yellow Day....me included... As announced on ibm.com:Spread the payments and save: Eligible customers purchasing new licenses of selected IBM Lotus or IBM WebSphere Portal offerings may choose to buy an additional two years of Software Subscr...

While I was out for a few days last week, a couple of key mainstream industry analyst reports were published. Both are worth checking out if you are subscribers to these firms: Gartner published an interesting report on Friday called "Domino 8 Moves Development to the Mainstream". Gartner hasn't...

Want to hear the Lotus strategy straight from the Lotus team's senior executives? For the next month or so, you'll have just that opportunity.... Webinars and dates (all at 10 AM ET / 15:00 BST): August 12: Sean Poulley, The Cloud Advantage August 19: Bruce Morse, Unified Communications and Col...

I thought there was something far more important coming up on the calendar, but then Nathan reminded us all that next week is "Yellow Day"...It's a time to be proud to be yellow. So show your support even bigger than last year, and on Aug 11. Wear yellow. Blog yellow. Tweet yellow. Bleed yellow. R...

It's only ten days away -- the Iam Lotus User Group in St. Louis, with the Chicago MWLUG following about five weeks from now. I've been prepping for IamLUG for a few days, and am confident this is going to be a great event. Some reasons to come to IamLUG -- where there are still a few seats availa...

A podcast I recorded a few weeks ago for a business or IT decision-maker kind of audience is now available in the IBM.com BizTech Reports section:Ed Brill, Director for IBM's End User Messaging and Collaboration practice, talks with BizTech Reports about the evolution of collaboration, and the issue...

The last three weeks have probably been among the most intense of my career. In the last two days, five months of work culminated in approvals to move a project forward. Unfortunately, as with many things since I moved back into product management, I can't say what we decided, yet. But I can prom...

Timely coverage that will be in CRN's hardcopy edition on Monday -- a good counterweight to Microsoft's partner conference this week. It won't be the only one...."We're seeing a big increase in the number of customers moving to the Foundations server," said James Sulfare, owner of Solinkit, a Chamb...

Lotus software has a new front door on ibm.com, and some other interesting updates.... The changes are subtle but important. First, the content is designed to be much more dynamic, with frequent updates. Second, the "what we offer" box has been reorganized into two groupings -- by business ne...

This week will mark nine months since my return to product management. What I love about product management, as I think I've said before, is that every day brings an unlimited amount of opportunity to get involved in "stuff" -- the tactical and strategic decisions around what products we build and...

My summertime travel schedule is shaping up and I'm excited to confirm that I will be part of the first Iam Lotus User Group, 3/4 August in St. Louis. Some of the speakers and sponsors have been announced for the event and include "names you must know" from the Lotus community and other events. Ea...

Tomorrow, IBM is hosting a virtual event on LotusLive.com. I will be presenting on the benefits of Notes/Domino 8.x under the theme of "messaging economics", while Lotus rock star Chris Crummey will lead a discussion and demonstration of the linked value of the Lotus brand products and solutions:Ta...

IBM is issuing two press releases today, one demonstrating overall momentum for the Lotus brand, and the other specifically focused on Lotus Foundations. Here are some of the quotes:Driven by guidance from Microsoft to abandon evaluation of currently-shipping products, Microsoft customers are choos...

Thursday morning, IBM is issuing a press release highlighting a customer win in Italy, Gruppo Amadori. About 1,000 of the company's 6,000 employees access PCs to help manage the production, processing, and delivery logistics of its poultry products for customers within Italy and internationally. In...

A resounding endorsement of Lotus Foundations in the Aussie version of ZDNet:Foundations should not be considered just for the IT challenged. Foundations is a great solution for a wide range of businesses because it takes away the need for an on-site IT guru; not every business is an IT firm. This s...

It almost feels like overkill to link this article 24 hours after it went live. Yesterday's news of the OpenNTF organizational overhaul has been a hot topic in the Lotus online community, with good contributions to the discussion from Declan Lynch, Steve Castledine, Rob McDonagh, and others (I'm sa...

One of many, many bits of news this week...The IBM Lotus and WebSphere Portal Business Solutions Catalog on Lotus Greenhouse provides a variety of IBM created and validated widgets to simplify many tasks developed with the latest Lotus technology. Take advantage of the tools listed in the Catalog an...

Last Friday morning, Bob Picciano -- general manager of the IBM Lotus division -- hosted a Q&A with community bloggers to discuss the new "Smarter Work" initiative that has started in line with IBM's overall Smarter Planet messages. The call was very timely, coming after Bob's keynote at RIM's...

eWeek has a 3.5 minute video feature that sings the praises of Lotus Foundations...Host Ashley Daly says:What would you say if I told you there was an IT solution out there that rarely ever has a problem, and when it does, can fix itself? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, such a solution do...

CIO.com has published an article by Lotus general manager Bob Picciano, highlighting nine trends in collaboration:We are in a very challenging period of history -- a time that is testing us all. Yet the challenges we face also provide an opportunity we shouldn't waste -- a chance to transform the wa...

In comments on yesterday's "Doing things different" post, Clayton Price wrote:Personally I feel for Lotus. I remember attending Lotus Fusion (Gold Coast, Australia) a good few years ago where there seemed to be approx 1000 attendees. Now each Lotus event I go to is lucky to have a 100 people. The gr...

Even as IBM and business partners continue to run some great Lotusphere Comes to You events, the calendar is starting to fill out for the second half of the year. In August, there are two user group-related events that have been announced: Iam Lotus User Group in St. Louis on August 3 and 4, and th...

Today was one of those days that I really love my job. I was at the University of Nebraska today, for three different reasons: a presentation to students on social networking in business; a customer meeting with the CIO, Walter Weir; and completion of a project we've been sponsoring in the Raikes...

The next two weeks are shaping up to be quite busy on the travel front. On Tuesday, April 21, I'll be at the kick-off the renamed Tri-State Lotus User Group meeting, which starts at 6 PM at IBM, 590 Madison Avenue, New York City. Then Wednesday, I move from New York to New England, at the kick-off...

Doug Spencer is on my team and is one of the demo gurus in the Lotus team. He's just posted a great video that explains what Lotus Foundations is about, then demonstrates the installation, setup, and deployment of a Foundations box.. The ten-minute video speeds up the boring parts of the install.....

Lotus marketing has been regularly posting videos to YouTube highlighting Lotus products, solutions, and now customers. These 22 new vignettes, recorded at Lotusphere and just posted, come from customers and business partners talking about the real-world use of Lotus software. You'll recognize som...

Really happy to see this announcement...Phase 2 International now offers online IBM Lotus applications to small-to-medium businesses (SMBs), adding to its various hosted service offerings which already include a Microsoft solution stack. ... The new hosted IBM solutions include Lotus Notes 8.5 for e...

My assumption is that most of you will see that headline and assume this is an April Fool's joke. The good news is it is not. Thanks to a connection in IBM Partnerworld, I've been shown the way to fix some of the biggest challenges expressed by Lotus brand customers with the IBM download site....

I am pleased to be speaking at a relaunch of the New York area Lotus User Group on Tuesday, April 21. The Tri-State Lotus User Group website went live this morning, and Mitch Cohen and Jim Casale have blogged about it. The meeting will be in the evening and will be in Manhattan to make things conv...

As Paul Mooney and Warren Elsmore announced earlier today, registration is now open for the absolutely 100% free UK Lotus User Group meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland on 8 and 9 October, 2009. The UKLUG is now in its third year, and looks to be even bigger and better than the successful 2008 event in...

Just going through my snail mail from the week away.... inside the mailer from IBM shareholder services, along with the proxy ballot for the 2009 shareholder meeting is the following insert... With 1.34 billion shares of IBM outstanding, we must mail out a lot of these proxy statements. There's...

First, let's get the important stuff out of the way -- the Belux Lotus User Group meeting today was a huge success. About 200 attendees filled the IBM Forum in Brussels to learn about the latest from IBM Lotus. Congratulations and thank you Thierry Soubestre from Pixelixir along with Laurent and t...

Bruce Elgort pointed me to the customer list page on Elgugi software's website. In just a eight months, Elgugi has won some really important and recognizable customers for their excellent IdeaJam software. But what this also says is that major organizations are investing in Domino applications t...

IBM announced today recognition of our award as CRN Channel Champion in various categories, including collaboration software.named a 2009 CRN Channel Champion at an awards ceremony in New Orleans, LA on March 10 at the XChange Solution Provider conference. The CRN Channel Champions study measures o...

Some updates to my calendar for next week... seems like we've got a lot of attention going into Denmark, with Mary Beth just having visited, my trip next week, and an April stop that Andre Guirard just blogged about. My visit next week is two-fold -- a Lotusphere Comes to You in Copenhagen, sponsor...

I'm really happy to announce that the New England Lotus User Group will be relaunching next month, on Wednesday, April 22. I'll be speaking at this meeting on a Notes/Domino 2009 update, and the open Q&A forum that the NELotus group is famous for. Only question I forgot to ask is whether we're...

Wednesday the 4th in Japan (so right about now) is the 15th anniversary of the Notes Consortium. This organization represents the Notes customers and business partners in the Japanese market. While I have not been over to Japan in about 18 months, I definitely plan to journey over this year --...

I thought this was a good article from the perspective of the collaboration market overall and where things are at today. Quotes from Gartner's Gene Phifer and IBM Lotus's Michael Garbett fill in the picture on changing trends and market opportunities. The article is especially timely for me as...

Coming out of Lotusphere, I've been involved in some very good conversation with the Lotus services and education team about our market opportunities in 2009. We did take a quick moment to celebrate some wins from 2008 -- and I received permission to share these publicly: - Lotus Education progra...

Really happy to see these two press releases from IBM Lotus partners this week... Elguji Software's IdeaJam Wins Coveted Lotusphere 2009 Awards:Elguji Software announced today that its IdeaJam software application won the prestigious IBM Lotus Chief Technology Officer Innovation and Breakout techno...

A colleague was asking me about this yesterday, and I thought it made a useful link for the blog. Lotus support publishes a list of all Lotus products along with their general availability date and, if announced, planned end of support date. The data shows our commitment to customer control/manage...

John Roling has music for the ears of any cost-conscious customer today...As we're all painfully aware, the current economic climate is far from wonderful. Businesses are looking for ways to cut corners and reduce costs whenever possible, and many times that leads to belt-tightening in your IT depar...

As one trip concludes, it's time to start looking ahead to the next. My upcoming visit to Europe will be the week of March 16. On the 17th, I am at a Lotusphere Comes to You in Århus, Denmark in the morning, sponsored by INOPI. In the evening, I'll be in Copenhagen meeting with the NotesNet.DK co...

Well this is a very odd Notes-is-dead response to Mike Altendorf's previous column condemning Notes in the pages of CIO.co.uk:In the early days of Notes I thought it was amazing technology, way ahead of its time. When people were talking about knowledge management and collaboration it was the platfo...

On Tuesday, I'll be heading over to Germany for three Lotusphere Comes to You events over the next ten days -- edcom nachlese in Munich, where I will be speaking on Thursday; Rheinland Nachlese in Düsseldorf, where I will be speaking on Monday the 16th, and Lotusphere Comes to You in Hamburg, where...

Nice to see some of our Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony moves recognized as contributing to IBM overall.... Link: eWeek: Palmisano's Top 15 Moves to Keep IBM Growing...

Suntel is one of the main telcos in Sri Lanka, with 550,000 customers, and are adopting IBM Lotus Notes/Domino, Sametime, Symphony:IBM announced today that Suntel, a Sri Lankan based telecommunications provider, has selected IBM Lotus software to create a collaborative environment to improve the way...

If you remember that, a sense of deja vu prevails for now -- and watch for more on Monday...IBM has announced its intent to acquire the strategic messaging service assets of Outblaze, Ltd., a privately held provider of online messaging and collaboration services, based in Hong Kong. Building on IBM...

Don't miss this positioning:IBM today fired a broadside at Microsoft by announcing that more corporations than ever are using Lotus Notes email program running on a Domino email server. Big Blue says Notes/Domino has quietly swiped big chunks of market share away from Microsoft's once dominant Outlo...

As anyone in the Lotus community knows, the week before Lotusphere is often one of a bit of market tactics. We start to talk about what we're going to talk about Lotusphere...Microsoft tries to steal the show. The game is being played a little differently this week. In fact, with all the fun of...

This morning, I'm en-route to Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Fine, no Stevenote, but I'm sure it will be pretty interesting. I'll be at the conference on Tuesday, and you can visit IBM at booth 3418 in the north hall. The Lotus brand hasn't been represented at Macworld Expo for many, many yea...

Nice to see friend and colleague Mr. Darren Adams quoted in the Times...more mainstream media attention for Lotus in the UK:Employers are experimenting with the new ideas of social networking, instant messaging and wikis to assemble and manage teams of the best people for any particular project, eve...

A big congratulations and thank you to Yancy Lent... PlanetLotus.org turned one yesterday! For a long time, the community had talked about a need to aggregate all the various blogs and websites covering Lotus software. Early efforts included dominoblogs.com and various OPML lists. Nothing quite s...

It's been a while since I've had a guest blogger...this topic is so important that I thought the voice should be first-hand. Jennifer Heins is Lotus Technical Content Architect and Strategist. Our Lotusphere 2009 Birds of a Feather session on the Future of Redbooks has been scheduled and I wanted...

This one is about mobility and collaboration....ok, I won't call this one a "viral video" but it's a nice production piece about our story in this space. More details on the comprehensive Lotus mobility page... Link: ibm.com/lotus/mobile...

OK, Charles, this *is* a viral video -- 14K views in 24 hours......

Almost missed this while I was out of the office the last few days. Irish RTE News had a feature segment on IBM's development and use of social networking tools, with specific mention of our internal Beehive project. Several researchers in our Dublin labs are featured, discussing how these tools a...

As we say, "Such a deal!":Act before December 22, 2008, and you can take advantage of the Lotus Foundations Lotusphere 2009 event special and enjoy significant savings on Lotusphere registration and a Lotus Foundations' starter pack . FOR ONLY $3000.00, you receive: * 1 Lotusphere 2009 Confe...

Interesting stuff has passed through my inbox over the last several days, including... News of one of the largest deals the Lotus brand has ever done in Australia, a multi-year effort with an organization I've enjoyed meeting each of my last several visits "down under". News of a European custome...

Great to see some mainstream media coverage resulting from my stop in New Zealand last week...Businesses have a lot to gain by embracing the concepts behind the hugely popular social networking internet sites people flock to in their private lives, says Ed Brill, a US-based IBM director who speciali...

A year ago, part of the presentation I delivered to audiences in Australia emphasized the importance for IT to recognize that the younger generation entering the workforce would bring different requirements. It said, specifically, a "technology savvy generation is entering the workforce". At that...

John Fontana profiles Lotus general manager Bob Picciano. They talk Notes/Domino 8.5, Sharepoint competition, hosting/cloud/SaaS, and Lotusphere:Microsoft went on record in July as saying it wants to get Lotus customers to convert five million seats of Notes to Microsoft's collaboration tools betwe...

One of the great things about moving from Notes/Domino sales to Notes/Symphony product management is that there was no real "break in" period. In my new job, I work with most of the same people I worked with in my old job, albeit from the different perspective of product management and being a peop...

A number of tidbits, news, rumors, hints, and interesting stuff cropping up on the blogs this morning. Paul Mooney has written several blog entries from DNUG, where my boss and my soon-to-be Lotusphere co-presenter (Kevin Cavanaugh and Brent Peters) presented one of the opening conference keynotes....

About a month ago, Jimmy Mooney released NotesCal, an iPhone app for accessing your Notes calendar. This morning, he's updated (and rebranded) the application as Notes Pro, supporting Domino mail, calendar, contacts, and to-do access on the iPhone. It's another step forward in terms of iPhone + Do...

By far the most frequently-asked question in the last 72 hours has been, "what exactly is your new role?" I realized at some point last night that my initial blog entry used a lot of high level words, but didn't describe the day-to-day. After spending yesterday in an all-day operational review, I...

It has been over eight years since I moved from Boston back to Chicago, after two years working in the Lotus division offices in Westford and Cambridge, Massachusetts. So there was some sense of déjà vu yesterda. I drove out to Westford for the first time in many years, and sat in an office with t...

(Forgive the date/time stamp...I inadvertently set the date of my Friday evening post to Monday...thus this time stamp is done only to make this entry chronologically later than the last one) I'm in the Boston area today for the first day of my new job. As I mentioned when announcing on Friday eve...

IBM personnel announcements aren't normally a topic for this blog. However, Earlier today, Kevin Cavanaugh, Vice President - Messaging and Collaboration, and Michael Garbett, Director - Worldwide Sales, announced that I have been promoted to Director, End-User Messaging and Collaboration. I guess...

The marketing team did a great job with today's Lotus Collaboration Summit event in Chicago. Navy Pier was a surprising choice for an event like this, but other than being at the far end of the convention center, and the crew in the next room using mechanical equipment to set up another conference...

Interop.com has a 30 minute video available that shows Bob Picciano's keynote from that conference two weeks ago. He's joined by Ron Sebastian for demonstrations of some of the current and future technology coming from Lotus software.... tomorrow at work."Web 2.0, Mashups and Other Collaboration Tr...

If you haven't had a chance to check out Bilal Jaffery's blog on Lotus Foundations, you should. Bilal is a marketing manager for Foundations, and as I learned myself during this week's Lotus Leadership Alliance, there's a lot more to the Lotus Foundations story than "fast easy-to-manage server". H...

There are a number of upcoming Lotus Collaboration Summit events in North America and Europe. Admittedly a smaller number than in the last few years, there still have been thousands more attendees at Lotus brand events in 2008 (e.g. Lotusphere Comes to You) than previous years. At any rate, one su...

Seems like a bout of insomnia tonight, which makes this as good a time as any to comment on the second day of this conference. As I've noted in the previous entries, the contents of the conference itself have been under NDA, so there's not much I can say about session specifics. But I have a story...

Summary: I still haven't met Bob Picciano, but I'm not supposed to. Picciano made it clear to the IBMers here that our priority is spending time with the customers and partners in attendance at this event. So, while I'm sure I'll meet Bob at some point today -- perhaps in my session/workshop this...

For those who are interested and/or couldn't join us in London last week, I've posted my current Notes/Domino family update presentation on Slideshare: Lotus Notes/Domino Update - UK Lotus Users Group, September 2008View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ibm lotus) For those who w...

A few links that you may find interesting... Grant Norman of Teamstudio describes UKLUG from his view:UKLUG as an event is certainly a huge step up in scale from last year. Being in central London has been important for the event to be a success. The venue is excellent. The speakers are first rate...

Check out postings on pmooney.net and dominobaloney.com...

The Lotus blogging community has had much discussion in the last few weeks about the perceived down side of writing "negative" blog postings directed towards IBM Lotus. I have contributed to the discussions as they have arisen, but haven't yet said anything right here at home. There are many mean...

Two Lotus-related announcements coming out of Interop today... the Globe covers the first:IBM Corporation is setting up a research center in Cambridge to develop better ways for businesses to use social networking software. "It's something that can have worldwide impact," said Irene Greif, director...

Today has been quite a blur, starting at 8 AM in Genève, going through three customer calls and a partner lunch there, then the SNoUG meeting in Lausanne, then a wonderful drive through central Switzerland to end up in Zürich. It would be hard to highlight everything, though Twitter followers saw a...

A few times this year, I've done a lot of traveling for a little actual work time. Nothing quite as crazy as that one time I was in Munich for three hours (and then back to the US), but most of my travel in the last several months has been of the 2-3 day variety. This week, my fifth trip to Europe...

My colleague Darren Adams has just posted about how we're using the Activities capability of Lotus Connections (as integrated into Lotus Notes 8) to plan my customer meetings etc. for Thursday and Friday next week in London: Basically we have a master document (Ed's schedule), some to-dos, a comme...

An IBM sales rep just pinged me and let me know that her customer is going to stop a pending decision to migrate to Microsoft and instead convert over 1000 of their users to Lotus Notes. Yay! While we regularly win decisions at customers, based on providing the best solution for their needs, it's...

These were interesting tweets to see today: I've known for some time that David is a fan of Lotus Notes, but this is the first time I've heard of him endorsing Notes in a forum like the Office 2.0 conference. Watch the video...especially about 16 minutes in... "In terms of what we do... we probab...

The UK's Computer Weekly examines the current career opportunity space around Lotus Notes and Domino:IBM's Domino server and Notes client are frequently treated as direct competitors to Microsoft's Exchange Server and Outlook. But while Exchange began as a messaging server, Notes and Domino originat...

What a great coincidence of timing! As the local team is putting together my schedule for a few days in Switzerland, we've determined that I'll be able to participate in the next meeting of SNoUG, the Swiss Notes Users Group, on September 16 in Lausanne. I'll be coming in late in the day -- at t...

Forrester principal analyst Rob Koplowitz held a teleconference yesterday, entitled "Notes Versus SharePoint: Shootout At The IT Corral". Koplowitz has plenty of experience to draw upon for his subject matter -- he worked at IBM/Lotus, Oracle, and Microsoft all in the collaboration space, and is fr...

Looks like I'll be back down under in what has become a wonderful annual tour. Planning now for the week of 17 November. The local team is setting up partner/customer lunches, user group meetings, and more. Looks like I'll miss the Melbourne Cup this year, but I'm sure there will be other interes...

Wow, the last 24 hours produced some awesome content online in the Lotus blogs! Here are a few posts you should visit... My colleague Andrea Waugh-Metzger helps you answer the question "Which version of ND8 should I deploy?": 8.0.1, 8.0.2, 8.5, or a mix/combination therein. Nice job, Andrea (and...

If you (or someone from your firm) will be at the International Legal Technology Association conference in Grapevine, Texas, next week, could you let me know offline? A possible meeting of interest I'd like to invite you to....

DominoPower Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz examines, at length, what happened with the editorial they published last week ... along with the aftermath...It's always been my belief, reflected in our editorial policy, that a community that can talk out it's tough issues is a stronger community. And t...

Good coverage of recent Lotus brand news...For almost any category of business software -- from word processing to spreadsheets, presentations to communication and collaboration -- Microsoft is the de facto vendor of choice. Alternatives do exist, but who wants to be the first one to rock the boat?...

After a refreshingly normal-paced summer, September looks to be quite a busy month. Here's what's on my calendar at the moment: September 9 -- an executive breakfast in Philadelphia; invitation only. I had hoped to meet with the South Jersey Lotus user group during that trip, but their meeting s...

This is a straightforward new flash video that talks about the main benefits of Lotus Foundations. Nice thing is that, while it is more "marketing" than technical, it's the kind of quick-hit that you can distribute to anyone in your organization and have them learn more about Foundations. T...

A few weeks ago, Alan suggested that Monday, 11 August should be "Yellow day", in honor of all the excitement going on around Lotus right now. Never one to shy away from a good idea, Nathan Freeman and the rest of the Lotus911 crew jumped right on that. Thus, Monday has been designated "Yellow day...

These two press releases just hit the wire...you'll want to read them both, they're much longer than I can quote here. "The Linux World Builds SMB Market Opportunity With Software Appliances From Lotus Foundations and ISVs":The new developments include a preconfigured version of SUSE Linux Enterpri...

Tony Austin sent along a diversion for the day...a crossword puzzle featuring terms related to IBM Lotus software... My linking it has nothing to do with the clue for 11 down.......

More media coverage of this week's Lotus momentum announcement....Now the Lotus brand is springing back to life. Buried in IBM's recent earnings report were signs of a resurgence in Lotus Notes and its Domino 8 Server, which together make up the company's fully integrated email, messaging and colla...

That's what I'm talkin' about...BM/Lotus Thursday hit back at Microsoft's boast that it plans to steal 5 million Notes customers this year by detailing a new 300,000-seat licensing deal with an Asian company and strong interest in Notes from emerging markets. ... IBM/Lotus seems to be doing a bett...

In my head last night, after what was really an amazing day with the big press release and all the buzz around it, I was writing a blog entry for today, marking my 4th anniversary as the product sales lead for Lotus Notes and Domino. I wanted to time travel back to August, 2004...I accepted this ne...

This is great marketing -- and apparently, quite successful:Since the beginning of 2008, we have been sending a little calculator to companies in Belgium that don't use IBM Lotus infrastructure. We want to calculate with them how much money they can save by migrating to IBM Lotus. After having con...

This morning, IBM is releasing specific details on the success for Lotus products during the first half of 2008. I have been here a long time; this press release is different in a number of ways from any we've done in the past.Led by strong sales of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 in the second quarte...

It looks like I'll be holding a team meeting for my little part of the IBM Lotus sales next week in Cambridge. We talked amongst ourselves and thought of a novel idea for part of our agenda....invite a few customers to join us for lunch. We're meeting in Cambridge... any Boston-area customers inte...

Look what happens when you collaborate and work together... Kudos to the IBM UK marketing team for this one......

After a pretty extensive discussion and review of support call volumes, we're looking at a decision to extend the end-of-support date for Notes/Domino 6.5 from the currently announced April, 2009, to April, 2010. Extended support would continue to be available after the end-of-support. The current...

This paper has been out for a couple of months but only recently appears to have made it to ibm.com... A 16-page white paper on IT trends in collaboration and productivity. Doesn't mention Lotus products until page 15...meaning it is meant more to be used for creating vision than to hype a particul...

A colleague asked me the other day if I could define what it is about the Lotus community that is so unique. There are strong communities around many technology products... each with many of the same attributes of passion, dedication, awareness, evangelism. So what's different around here? I thin...

A mainstream media piece on blogging and social media in business. A lot of point-of-view on what the benefits are and who is using social networking/media. Includes a bit about Lotus Connections:"Large corporates are using this to connect their own employee base together. Smaller companies are ge...

My colleagues down under have announced a technical conference to be held in Sydney the week of 15 September.... On the 15th, they'll hold the annual "Lotus Collaboration Summit", which is a free product/strategy event similar to those which were done worldwide last year in the second half of th...

Often times when we get on a topic about Lotus's strategy, direction, or marketing, I receive comments along the lines of, "I get it, but my executives don't". Last week, this lead me to have a conversation with Dave Montgomery, who is one of the managers at the Lotus executive briefing center, cur...

During my travels the last week, there have been a huge number of interesting postings on Lotus community blogs that have been worth reading. I haven't had a chance to link to them all real-time, but as a summary, I suggest you check these out: * Andrew Pollack on Lotus' Project "Atlantic": Here'...

The IBM developerWorks Lotus team has launched phase II of their online wiki efforts in the developerWorks Lotus forums and community section. Eight Lotus-related wikis are now up and running:IBM Composite Applications wiki Find and share technical articles, samples, and best practices. These reso...

I've been remiss in blogging about last month's launch of Lotus Foundations. Lotus Foundations is the result of the acquisition of Net Integration Technologies (Nitix), as announced at Lotusphere 2008. In just a few short months, the product has been released under the Lotus brand, and new partn...

I had a conversation late yesterday with one of the IBMers on the software side of IBM's System z team. We were talking about upcoming efforts to promote Domino on System z running Linux. On the record, I'll admit that over the years, I've been somewhat ambivalent about the various different ser...

OK, this topic has been beaten to death, with almost 150 comments here on edbrill.com, a bunch at Bruce Elgort's site, at Nathan Freeman's site, at John Head's site, and at Greyhawk's. Lotus VP of development Brent Peters has also chimed in, with this comment on vowe.net:Let me say, that we have th...

As mentioned, I spent the day yesterday at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. My primary reason for being there was to work the Notes/Domino stand in the IBM booth Admittedly, ped duty isn't something a worldwide sales exec volunteers for all that often, but I wanted to get to E2.0 and see what this y...

Well I'm a few hours later than anticipated, but I've arrived in Boston to spend Wednesday at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. I will be at the IBM booth in the expo from 12 noon to 2 and again 4:30 to 6:30 PM. Stop by to say hi. I've stocked up on business cards and moo cards (with my own photogra...

Maybe I'm being a bit of a masochist this morning (can't wait to see what google hits are sent this way by my use of that word...)....Others had more strategic reasons for being disappointed with the iPhone's enteprise support. "They're missing 50 percent of the e-mail population," complained John...

The press and analysts have picked up on yesterday's session between IBM Lotus and Microsoft at Enterprise 2.0 yesterday... CIO.COM: Enterprise 2.0 Faceoff: Microsoft Lags Behind IBM in Social SoftwareWhile both vendors showed their products could integrate with existing e-mail systems (especially...

Apparently I missed the memo that I could have presented at this conference in jeans! (Photo: Martin Humpolec -- Thank you for your camera lens, looks like I've lost weight!) I'm sitting now with hundreds attending Mary Beth Raven's session covering Notes 8.5 and beyond. She's getting applause f...

Lest anyone think that this job is all about the glamourous life...today started at 5 AM Paris time. That's after going to bed somewhere around 1:30 AM Paris time, after a few conference calls back with the US last night. That 5 AM wakeup lead to a 7:45 AM flight to Bremen, where I arrived at the...

It looks like I'll be able to make it out to the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston next week. I'm excited to be there on Wednesday, June 11. I'll be at the Lotus product showcase pedestal from Noon to 4 PM and around for networking and the like the rest of the day. If you are there, be sure to...

One of the most enjoyable parts of my day job is working with IBM Lotus salespeople and business partners on learning the Notes/Domino business. IBM presents a series of in-depth "Top Gun" training classes for sellers:IBM Top Gun training is designed to increase sales, solutions, competitive and te...

Rob Novak has announced: Collaboration University 2008 registration has opened today. With a brand new website sprucing up the joint, we're all excited to begin the summer-long journey towards another successful and excellent conference on Lotus Quickr and Sametime. We're even adding some Lotus Conn...

The "Bluehouse" project team announced earlier today that Bluehouse.lotus.com is now open to North American customers who would like to participate in the managed beta program. The current functionality of "Bluehouse" is listed on their home page. The managed beta seeks to ensure that "Bluehouse...

Last week, LotusUserGroup.org published an interview with Bob Picciano, the new General Manager of IBM Lotus software. Debbie Lynd takes Picciano through a number of interesting topic areas, including marketing (of course), what collaboration means today, how Symphony is impacting the market, and g...

Back in September, the Support team blog wrote about a new diagnostic tool available, useful for analyzing NSDs and other files related to Domino crashes and hangs etc. Support just recently published an updated technote about the diagnostic tool, with the latest version now available through that...

Couple of travel destinations this week including Tuesday's Lotusphere Comes to You in Toronto, the last one on my spring tour. The venue is the Delta Chelsea Hotel, 33 Gerrard Street West. Something big must be going on in Toronto this week, though, as the only hotel option I could find for Monda...

Nice mention of Lotus Symphony in the mainstream press... Rob Tidrow, a computer programmer who has written several guides to using Microsoft Office, says that Symphony does not lack many features that even power users of Office need. Tidrow, who just finished writing "IBM Lotus Symphony for Dummie...

Over 300 attended today's Lotusphere Comes to You event in Istanbul. This was the first ever LCTY here -- in previous years, Lotus has participated in a SWG Forum event, but not a stand-alone Lotus event. Both of the reporters I interviewed with wanted to know, why now for an LCTY? The answer --...

There are a number of Admin2008 / Developer2008 wrap-up blog postings showing up -- Kevin Kanarski, Kevin Pettit, Jess Stratton, and many others. It was great to be a part of the event, if just for one day. Still, the real measure of success for a conference is what the attendees felt about it. T...

Some press coverage yesterday on Lotus Quickr Content Integrator...IBM Lotus Quickr Content Integrator provides wizards and templates for moving content in mass to Quickr from SharePoint sites, Microsoft Exchange folders, IBM Lotus Domino Document Manager libraries and IBM Lotus Domino team room app...

During Admin2008 here in Boston, I lead a birds-of-a-feather session yesterday called, "Sending a Message to Management: How to keep Lotus Notes and Domino in your Company". There were about 80 people in attendance... as I said at the start of the session, I considered the attendance a "win" becau...

James Dellow follows up on a Sam Lawrence thought regarding social productivity...It reminded me that many years ago I heard Dale Chatwin talk about the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a government organisations, as a Lotus Notes case study. A quick search actually turned up a case study (PDF) abou...

The Irish Lotus User Group has posted the agenda for the conference in Dublin on 4-6 June. It's great to see the breadth, depth, and expertise on the agenda. I know a lot of people seem to think that Alan and I are the same person, but I've never been in four places at once... Looks like we've...

I'll be at Admin2008 in Boston on Thursday, May 1. My presence there is two-fold -- leading a Birds-of-a-Feather and participating in the always-popular Meet the Experts. The Birds-of-a-Feather Session is entitled, "Sending a Message to Management: How to keep Lotus Notes and Domino in your Compan...

The Lotus Quickr team has been working to create a separate download package for Quickr Entry 8.1. That package is now available on Passport Advantage, under the e-assembly part number of CR72XEN. Happy downloading!...

Steve and I (with a shadow role by Mr. Lepofsky) played a fun game today with Tweetscan -- reading various gripes from Lotus Notes users posted to Twitter. There were a lot of them! Just looking at the last few days, there are some people who are very unhappy with their use of Notes. and...

Rocky caught a Notes cameo on the US TV show CSI last night...right at the beginning, just after the show's intro credits, CSI Willow sends Grissom some photos from her iPhone. Grissom is at home sick, and he opens his laptop, and then his email, and there it is - Lotus Notes! I think it is Notes 7....

I have much to catch up on from last week. One blast from the past happened at the Lotusphere Comes to You in Milwaukee. One of the attendees approached me after my first session, and I thought that I had probably met him before. It turns out that it was Chris, who was one of my first customers w...

eWeek comments on the Lotus performance during Q1....IBM quietly promoted Lotus Software Group General Manager Mike Rhodin two weeks before his division reported a 17 percent year-over-year increase in first-quarter earnings April 16. ... Ovum Research analyst Steve Hodgkinson wrote April 3 that...

Looks like Red Hat has launched a cool site highlighting Lotus solutions atop Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Link: LotusOnRedHat.com...

Catching up on blog reading after being out of the office for a few days. Looks like a bit of a frustration meme going around.. Nathan Freeman writes, "The Masters of Derision", in which he assesses IBM's latest television advertising:Because they're targeting management by advertising on The Mas...

Ian has been blogging the Lotusphere Comes to You events in England, and now steps back to reflect on those as well as the change of Lotus general manager:It is clear from even the most casual observation to see that the funds now being invested in product development are at a rate not seen for a de...

Over at the Lotus Connections blog, Suzanne Minassian has been busy posting a new series of videos demonstrating Lotus Connections features. There are two available so far, including this one on Activities:...

It seems like a few of the Lotus bloggers are examining their roots in Lotus Notes. I think this is a good meme type of topic...think we will all learn a lot about each other if we share. My start was pretty simple. In 1993, I was working at US Robotics, and our application development team was c...

My third appearance at the Detroit Notes Professionals meeting was earlier today... and it felt just like the last two. Same (full) room at same IBM location, a number of long-time community members and IBMers. There's not much point in blogging about my presentation -- you need only look at Ray B...

Yes, earlier today, TechTarget managed to send a fourth e-mail to SearchDomino subscribers advertising how a particular vendor can help you migrate off Lotus Notes to "modern platforms", claimingmigration off Lotus Notes applications improves ROI, speeds application deployment, and minimizes disrupt...

Additional dates and locations for Lotusphere Comes to You 2008 have been announced, mainly in the US and Canada. See www.lotus.com/lcty for details. Some of these are regional IBM events, and others are organized and led by business partners. Toronto will still be added, in May, just not finali...

A very long but successful day at the Intercontinental Chicago yesterday. Enjoyed meeting so many of you (think there was one or two that I didn't get to) throughout the day. John Head has an excellent summary, I wanted to add a few observations: My "aha!" moment of the day was asking the audienc...

The news is out about Quickr 8.1 -- planned availability (eGA) on 28 March in English...IBM Lotus Quickr 8.1 is team software that helps you access and share information and project materials that you need to get the job done, and to make better, more informed decisions. Lotus Quickr Standard provid...

A case study highlighting use of Notes/Domino 8, Sametime, and Quickr...Although the company's Nutra-Flo Protein and Biotech Products division has a reputation for quality and innovation that extends around the world, its IT systems were ill-prepared for the demands of global business. "As a medium-...

Announced last week, big recognition across-the-board in IBM, with specific awards in the Lotus brand:IBM took home an armful of trophies, including awards for Program and Support in Collaboration Software; Technical and Overall winner in Data and Information Management; Technical, Program and Suppo...

Last week's Lotusphere Comes to You event in San Francisco was really fantastic. We had great attendance -- they had to bring three additional rows of chairs in during the keynote -- and great content. I was pleased to see the number of west coast partners that showed up, not just as exhibitors bu...

Cool news coming out of the Rochester Institute of Technology today...IBM today announced the launch of the first software Innovation and Collaboration Lab on the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) campus in Rochester, N.Y., where future software developers will work on 21st century enterprise...

The US General Services Administration is highlighted in Federal Computer Week:The General Services Administration saved more than $1 million when it installed an agencywide instant-messaging system. Casey Coleman, GSA's chief information officer, said those saving are an example of the benefits o...

Announced in Europe yesterday...IBM has teamed up with partners in Austria and Poland to offer Microsoft-free personal computers for the eastern European market, IBM said in a statement on Tuesday. International Business Machines Corp said it was offering the PCs based on the open-source Linux ope...

Thank you to Chris for giving an in-progress update on the first virtual Redbook residency...In a word, great! We, the first remote residency team, have already established an effective way to collaborate with each other as well as "as a whole" - by utilizing Lotus Greenhouse and Sametime Unyte. We'...

An interview with our own Chris Blatnick on what it means to be an employee evangelist...We think you will be astonished at the passion, energy and commitment that Chris has put into promoting Lotus Notes. not those of us who know him.... While I loved helping people internally, I always felt there...

Having just flown over the emerald island, I could see how anxious the Irish are about this... Registration is open for the June meeting of the Irish Lotus User Group. The last couple of years have sold out quickly.... almost feels like Lotusphere of years ago. The organisers' blogs are all anno...

An interesting and balanced viewpoint on Lotus Symphony, six months after its introduction. Mike Rhodin is interviewed, and explains several of the reasons why Symphony is attractive to the marketplace now. The article seems to convey that "time will tell", which is a fair view to take of Symphony...

The team running the Irish Lotus Users Group has been making steady progress towards this year's event, 4 to 6 June 2008. As the site hints in the sponsorship information, a large number of speakers have indicated we'll be there -- and the list is growing. The call for abstracts went out last week...

One of the most high-profile, public discussions of customers migrating away from Lotus Notes has been the saga of Accenture. In April, 2001, CRN ran a story entitled, "Zollar Challenges Microsoft In Bid To Keep Accenture Business". By mid-2002, Accenture had announced their migration. The case s...

Another good analysis coming out of Lotusphere....If Lotus can tap into the web 2.0 zeitgeist and harness the present wave of collaboration tools visible on the internet in a way that can be rolled out to corporate customers then it will be the undisputed leader of the next wave of corporate technol...

Looks like the cat is out of the bag... Lotus911 has launched a Loutus community implementation of Connections at www.bleedyellow.com. Very cool and from a brief look at other blogs, already very popular! I think it's interesting that the site is called bleedyellow and not dyeyellow....

Gee, do you think this might be related to stuff going on at Lotusphere? (that's a clever way of saying, "lots more about this on Monday!"):IBM today announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Net Integration Technologies Inc., a Toronto, Canada-based, privately held company that offers a com...

Engadget has picked up the story from earlier this week around Lotus support for the iPhone. What's more interesting is the comments, where Andrew Pollack is winning fans and influencing people through a single-handed effort to fight the trolls. Nice job, Andrew, and great to see the Engadget crow...

Looks like the first of many pre-Lotusphere stories to hit the streets... E-mail software from IBM Corp. will be available on Apple Inc. iPhones and iPod Touch devices under a new partnership that brings together two big rivals of Microsoft Corp. IBM plans a formal announcement of the Lotus Notes e...

Great to see another community resource get underway over the last few days. Run by Bill Buchan, Jason Hook, Paul Mooney, and Mike Smith, NotesBerry.org is designed to be a resource for Domino and Blackberry users -- and there are more than a few of us out here :). One key is that the focus isn'...

Since it went live a few weeks ago, PlanetLotus.org has become my top-visited site every day (yes, even more than perezhilton.com). Many of you have expressed similar excitement about the site,. Our fearless Taking Notes podcasters decided it was time to discuss it with creator Yancy Lent, and jus...

Paul Mooney addresses a topic that has been buzzing for a few days....The [Irish Lotus Users Group, ILUG] event is from the 4th-6th June in Dublin Ireland. The event will be held here. This, of course conflicts with DNUG [German Notes Users Group] in the summer. So, did we do it o...

Speaking of Lotus community bloggers, Yancy Lent has been quietly building a site that many of us have been trying to come up with for some time...an aggregator of Lotus community blogs. planetlotus.org, which I found through referrers to this site, is a very impressive approach to watching the com...

News from the Lotus Connections team...IBM announced the availability today of a new corporate social networking visualization and analysis tool aimed at helping users better navigate their personal and corporate social networks. IBM's Atlas for Lotus Connections will allow users to identify key e...

As announced yesterday on the Symphony website... beta 3 is now available. The beta 3 focus was to get language support enabled -- over the next several weeks, Symphony beta 3 will be available in 23 additional languages. There are additional features in beta 3, performance improvements, and suppo...

With friends like these...Modernizing Lotus Notes applications is fraught with difficulties, complex decisions, and considerable expense. However, with the right approach, migration off Lotus Notes applications improves ROI, speeds application deployment, and minimizes disruption to users - while pr...

From time to time, I'm asked whether/when other Lotus product groups will join the IBM blogging community. The Lotus Connections team has had online presence since before the product shipped -- through efforts like the Lotus Greenhouse and the Paxos project for Lotus business partners. Tonight, an...

Empire State readers might want to be in Albany next Friday, the 7th, for the New York Capital District Lotus User Group meeting. Details here...

Good case study of a Notes-based intranet deployment in New Zealand that added key functions like people finder, leave requests, RFI process and more to a 650-employee organization."We wanted an intranet that everybody would use and view every day, and we needed workflow as well," says [Siggy ...

To go along with the beta 2 announcement, you'll find two videos about Lotus Symphony posted on YouTube. The first one talks about some of the motivations behind Symphony evaluation at various customers, and the second is a Ron Sebastian demonstration of Symphony (posted a few weeks ago, but worth...

Symphony beta 2 is being officially announced today... some early coverage:Lotus general manager Mike Rhodin said that more than 250,000 copies of the software's Beta 1 version have been downloaded. "We've been getting very widespread response to this initiative," Rhodin told InternetNews.com. "The...

The channel announcement highlights some of the updates in the new version of Lotus Connections, which is planned for electronic availability on November 16: Expanded support for more operating systems, more browsers, and more directories, so you can easily deploy and integrate social software acro...

In the Lotus strategy section of the presentations I've been giving this week, one of the slides that I've been spending a lot of time on is how technology trends are changing. A specific talking point on there is really interesting -- how "communities are forming both inside and outside the f...

Well, it was available yesterday, but I forgot to hit "save" on the blog entry...We just made the Lotus Symphony Beta 2 release available from our download site. Be one of the first to try out this new release and let us know what you think. ... Remember to un-install previous versions of Lotus Symp...

Today I met... A customer with a constituency where a gmail/hotmail kind of model would be appropriate to serve a huge population of users... Customers and partners at an event where 95% of the registrants showed up -- whilst they were only expecting the usual 50-60%...(and the establishment did...

The Lotus España team has posted a useful eight-minute video demonstration of the Lotus collaboration story en español. Covers all products including Notes 8, Connections, and Sametime -- but more importantly, covers them from the perspective of an end-user, rather than product-by-product. Find t...

The AP follows up on their story from earlier in the week...Comcast has repeatedly denied blocking any Internet application, including "peer-to-peer" file-sharing programs like BitTorrent, which the AP used in its nationwide tests. On Tuesday, Mitch Bowling, senior vice president of Comcast Online...

The team at Teamstudio has started a group blog on Lotus Notes and IT governance. Some good topics already being discussed, such as this one:Then the other day I was speaking with another customer who had 8,000 databases (not counting mail files). Not so impressive you may think. However, they only...

Still love that line, which Art Thomas coined when we announced Quickr.... Anyway, today there's a new Quickr promotion running in the US and Canada (only -- no other countries have implemented this promotion, so, well, don't ask :-). Now through December 31st, 2007, customers buying 25 Lotus N...

Another update from the front lines...We started getting reports from some of our users last week that large e-mail transfers via Lotus Notes were once again working on the Comcast network. I did some testing this weekend and every upload was successful. So it would seem the filtering, at least for...

It seems the story is much bigger than thought when Kevin Kanarski first wrote about it.Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally. The i...

It's been a couple of days since Bruce Elgort and Elguji software announced their project, the IdeaJam and "Elguji Ideas" software. There was obviously quite a conga line of congrats and good tidings in the community following the announcement. My silence was not meant to convey anything other tha...

IBM Lotus is highlighted on the homepage of ZDNet.co.uk, including links to a white paper on Unified Communications and collaboration solutions. Right above that link, about halfway down on the middle of the page, there's an embedded video. No direct link to it, but once you find it and click, you...

Concluding a long trip and realizing... I won't be at home tomorrow, either! Tomorrow is the Chicago edition of the Lotus Collaboration Summit, in the way-cool venue of the Field Museum! (I have no idea where the sessions actually take place, and whether Sue will be looking over my shoulder during...

As already blogged today by Alan Lepofsky, Ron Sebastian has created a video showing some of the new features in Notes 8.0.1, now posted to YouTube. What Alan didn't mention is how quickly this happened -- I think I saw the first request to create such a video yesterday. Ron just went and did it....

...well, you know the line. A bigger-than-expected turnout for today's Lotus Collaboration Summit here, somewhere above 250. I think we had the right pacing going with the translation, and the team made some adjustments to the plenary session to keep it interesting. Lunch was better today -- the...

Announced today:Effective on the [U.S.-formatted] dates listed below, IBM will withdraw support from the following product releases licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement: 5724-E70 6.5.[x] 4/30/09 IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 55724-E89 6.5. ...

Over 500 attended today's Lotus Collaboration Summit in Milan, filling the auditorium, eating the lunch buffet's entire stock of delicious prosciutto and smoked salmon, and generally having a great event. I had the opportunity to present the Lotus strategy as well as the Notes/Domino 8 update....

My colleague Joel Demay has posted a 15-minute online end-user demonstration of Notes 8 with narration en français. Mais oui! Lotus Notes 8.0 Demo - Part 1 - IntroductionUploaded by jdemay...

Getting from the airport to downtown in Minneapolis via the light rail is one of the easiest and most pleasant airport-to-town journeys anywhere in the US. I also can't think of any other major US city that has adopted the no-entry-gate approach to a rail line. A full and busy day ahead, culminati...

As I speculated...IBM said Wednesday that the beta version of its free Lotus Symphony productivity software has been downloaded more than 100,000 times since the company made it available on the Internet a week ago. IBM said the number represents a record for software downloaded from its Web site....

Following last week's Lotus Collaboration Summit in New York, there have been many updates to the Lotus Collaboration Summit online website. One of the useful new sections is the "Demo Diner": The Diner is a convenient place to access all the current Lotus product demonstrations. At present, th...

Computerworld has a story summarizing various bloggers' reactions to and reviews of Lotus Symphony. While testers praised Symphony's slick interface, they also said the software, which is still in beta, has performance and feature-set problems. Users reported that Symphony starts up and runs slowly,...

I've been debating over breakfast whether to say anything about the burgeoning "Lotus Redbooks are dead" buzz in the Lotus blogging community. I've read the postings by Carl Tyler, Christopher Byrne, Stuart McIntyre, vowe, Tom Duff, and Ben Poole. When something is that prominent in the community,...

It's been a pretty impressive week for the launch of Lotus Symphony. While that may have overshadowed some of the other big Lotus news this week, it's great to see the headlines and awareness. When friends and neighbors start asking about your products, you know awareness is making its way into th...

Several events over the next few weeks. On Wednesday next week, September 26th, I'll in Grand Rapids for the Western Michigan Lotus Users Group meeting. Should be arriving at about 10 AM for an update on all things Notes/Domino. The subsequent Wednesday, October 3, I'll be in Minneapolis for a me...

Irwin Lazar of Nemertes Research comments on today's Lotus Symphony announcement:I've yet to see a feature comparison between Symphony and Microsoft Office, but assuming there is a roughly equal set of features, it will be very difficult to get enterprises to pay of Office when they can use Symphony...

I have a new-found respect for the Lotusphere keynote/opening general session team. Today, our "casting call" was at 6:30 AM (I might, perhaps, possibly have arrived more like 6:45). I was told, oh, that's nothing, for Lotusphere it is more like 5 AM! Wow! In a 2+ hour keynote, there was a lot...

I've just discovered that I won't have live Internet access during the keynote of today's Lotus Collaboration Summit. So, I'm drafting wifi now, before our guests arrive, to give some updates. There are a half-dozen new announcements this morning, with Symphony already out and in the press. I'll...

The first press release from Tuesday's Lotus Collaboration Summit has hit the wire. IBM is announcing today the release of Lotus Symphony, "a suite of free software tools for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations." Symphony is available starting today at ibm.com/lotus/symp...

I'm really looking forward to the next two days -- I'll be in New York for the Lotus Collaboration Summit on Tuesday. Featuring key speakers such as IBM's Steve Mills and Mike Rhodin, along with Forrester's Erica Driver and a panel of customers, this should be a fantastic set of speeches, demonstra...

Kevin Kanarski recently started a blog, and one of his first entries posits a challenge his users are seeing:For the past couple of months our Lotus Notes users (myself included) have experienced dropped connections in Lotus Notes when sending e-mail with attachments from a Comcast Internet connecti...

A view of how one US agency is using collaborative tools like Lotus Connections to get work done...As the Internet blossoms into Web 2.0, some workers and managers are discovering new tools to cope with task and data overload: Flexible tools designed for the myriad challenges knowledge workers face,...

John Head has posted already covering my opening keynote, and is sitting in the back of the room typing away while Mary Beth Raven speaks on Notes 8....

Just back from dinner with some of the other speakers for this week's Collaboration University event in Kansas City. Thank you to Rob Novak/SNAPPS and Liz Novak for being gracious hosts and indulging the need for barbecue...Jack Stack was excellent. This is a busy week in the lead-up to the Septem...

I've been asked a number of times in the last week about upcoming Notes/Domino 8 events, and my schedule related to them. There is so much going on in September, I can't possibly cover everything.... but here's some to start: The Lotus Collaboration Summit events around the world are in full swin...

InternetNews.com's coverage of the Notes/Domino 8 release last week had some interesting stuff in it on Lotus's relevant position in the market. The reporter seems to have talked to several analysts about market share, each coming up with different answers. First, there's Gartner:Gartner estimate...

While I was on vacation last week, Alan gave some visibility to a "what is the future of Notes" discussion on LinkedIn. A few days later, it's worth taking another look at the end-result of that question and subsequent discussion. There's a typical two-camp dichotomy to the responses posted on Li...

In the not so distant past people stared all day at computer screens which only showed green or amber text. Then some really creative people came up with ASCII art. Remember the first time you saw :-) and someone had to tell you to tilt your head and look at it sideways! Next as graphical user...

Hi everyone. There is still time for you to register for the two Collaboration University events taking place in September. The web site lists the sessions, speakers, and more. These are going to be fantastic events. Unfortunately I (Alan, Ed will be there) can't attend, but you should!...

So here it goes, my first blog entry on the famous edbrill.com. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Alan Lepofsky and I work on the Lotus Strategy team. For my first post, I wanted something that would be very interactive. So, I am going to ask you, the community, to provide feedback on a slide that is used in the Lotus Strategy presentation....

I wasn't able to meet up with a number of customers during my pass through Cleveland on Monday. So, working with the local NEOLUG (Northeast Ohio Lotus User Group) leaders, we're arranging a meet and greet kind of thing for the evening of August 20, probably in Independence. If you are in NEOLUG,...

Lotus community bloggers Tom Duff and Gregg Eldred have gotten together and started a blog on a topic that is at the core of what the community stands for -- the notion of helping to promote the product by which we all make our living. Check it out at www.lotusviralmarketing.com. From their kickof...

Bruce kicked off a good discussion yesterday on the ISV market for Notes/Domino:Now if we turn our attention to "applications" such as help desk, ISO compliance, CRM etc. how many companies are purchasing these types of applications from ISV's? It seems from the discussions I have been having with m...

Michael Robinson brought this new website to my attention, one focused solely on Domino performance. Hope to see it develop into a useful community tool... Link: Fastnsf.com...

(About 50 updates in my Japan set on Flickr) What a great event! I spent more than three hours with this group...two hours in formal presentation and Q&A, and another hour while community members did demonstrations of everything from Notes V1 (yes, really) to some great Notes 8 composite appl...

As the jet lag clears, I'll have a few more important catch-up thoughts from Japan. For now, this entry on Michael Sampson's weblog seems worth some attention:On Thursday I met with Mark Bennett, the IT Manager for the New Zealand offices of a global organization. What's interesting about Mark is t...

I had a fantastic time yesterday in Osaka and Nagoya, though I was thoroughly exhausted at the end of the day. Much of what took place yesterday encapsulates what I love about working with and in the Japanese market, and being here in general. Yesterday evening, I participated in a roundtable eve...

As I've mentioned previously, Lotus and partners will be running a series of Lotus Collaboration Summit events during the second half of 2007. The media and product launch event will be September 18. Customer/partner events will be both before and after that date, so someone will win product roule...

The developerWorks Lotus team has launched a new Podcast page. Several of the podcats posted are application development sessions from Lotusphere 2007, as well as interviews with Carol Jones and the Notes 8 development team. Don't forget the other podcasts in the Notes community, such as Taking No...

As of this morning, 80 days in advance, they have 171 people registered! Great agenda for the day set out as well. Congratulations to the DominoPoint community. The Italian contingent might want to mark their calendars for the week of 8 October as well..regional launch events in both Roma and Mi...

As first reported on the Quickr Blog and the Connections Blog, both products are now available for download. There's also a great writeup about Quickr out today on CMSWire: IBM Drops an 'e', Goes Web 2.0 with Lotus Quickr (Thanks, Ed). An extensive view of the new release:In a timely move, the lar...

The Boston Globe follows up on last week's Enterprise 2.0 conference with thoughts about Lotus Connections and other social software in the enterprise:"It is the high-school- and college-age children of executives who are spreading the word," said Andrew MacAfee , a Harvard Business School associate...

Press coverage of Lotus Connections release continues..."Dogear for me as an IBM employee has completely replaced my habit of Googling for answers," said Lotus strategist Alan Lepofsky. "Now I go to Dogear and get maybe 40, 50 or 100 links that have already been vetted by the subject experts in my c...

With this week's press release announcing Lotus Quickr availaibility, and next week's release date, the Quickr machine is in motion. A great resource to keep track of it all is Stu McIntyre's Quickr Blog. He's covered just about everything this week. If you're into Quickr news, I also suggest you...

This completes the bingo card -- every analyst, big or small, in the messaging business (bar one) is projecting growth and positive direction for Lotus Notes and Domino... even former doubters...- Despite an upsurge in open-source and hosted competitors, IBM Corp.'s Lotus Notes corporate e-mail clie...

InfoWorld's Ephraim Schwartz on the market impact of Lotus Quickr and Connections announcements, including quotes from Gartner's Dave Cearley:All of this could potentially have an impact on network traffic, bandwidth, and storage, but that is not the largest issue IT faces, according to David Cearle...

Computerworld covers the announcement of Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections, both shipping next week:As part of a new "Web 2.0 Goes to Work" initiative, the IBM tools will bring popular consumer Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis and social networks to the enterprise, said Rod Smith, IBM's vice...

I've been tracking a few upcoming European opportunities over the last few days. One follows out of last week's successful Deutsche Notes Users Group meeting. The Lotus Offensive 2007 highlights the effort the IBM Lotus team in Germany is putting into the upcoming Notes/Domino, Quickr, and Connect...

For the last two weeks, most of my working hours have been in customer engagements or related activities. It almost feels like the rush to the end of the year business close, perhaps even having something to do with June being Microsoft's fiscal calendar close. Major travel challenges mix in addit...

If you missed the Lotus mid-year update with Mike Rhodin, Ken Bisconti, and Jeff Schick, an audio replay of the event is now online on ibm.com. We are still working on some of the unanswered or follow-up questions, and I'll update as when/how/where those get posted....

On yesterday's Lotus executive mid-year update, Mike Rhodin and Jeff Schick both mentioned the Lotus Greenhouse. Greenhouse is self-described as:Lotus Greenhouse is your platform to experience and influence the direction of the latest software tools and technologies that are being developed by IBM....

Thank you to the hundreds of Lotus customers and partners (and a few competitors!) who tuned in to today's Lotus mid-year update web event. This was a first try at something new for us, and it went very well from all perspectives. Anyone concern that the event would just be "talking heads" ended p...

Several bloggers in the last few weeks have written on the notion of Domino versus SharePoint. It may have started from a posting I did last month, examining the propaganda in Redmond Channel Partner Online that severely lacked for business issues. In almost every case where I have been involved i...

CRN interviews a number of Lotus partners on the opportunities ahead with Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, and Lotus Sametime:When it comes to moving "social networking" wares into the more restricted corporate environment, IBM may have the edge over other vendors, some pundits and solution provider...

Only a few days remain before Tuesday's Lotus Executive Panel. Mike Rhodin, Ken Bisconti, and Jeff Schick will provide brief progress reports on new Lotus products and solutions, followed by a live question/answer session. I will be moderating the event, and will get my first look at questions sub...

As evidence of the ongoing renewal of focus on Notes/Domino, I've occasionally pointed to the work being spearheaded by Bob Balaban. Like Mary Beth Raven before him, it's been impressive to see the ramp-up of interactivity on his blog. Clearly, the passion in the community that has resulted in all...

At last week's Irish Lotus Users Group meeting, Bruce Elgort announced his retirement from OpenNTF.org. Bruce and Nathan Freeman created an open-source movement around Lotus Notes and Domino applications several years ago. Many others have been involved since, and OpenNTF has come to represent bot...

Looks like the Irish Lotus User Group meeting last Thursday/Friday was a huge success. Over 250 attendees, great speakers, and some fun surprises. Wish I could have been there. Thank you and congratulations to the conference organisers Paul Mooney, Eileen Fitzgerald, Warren and Kitty Elsmore, Bil...

A few more new case studies have been posted to ibm.com... Borregaard -- Norwegian company implements Notes/Domino after also evaluating Exchange/Outlook. Using Sametime as well as SAP integration with Notes. Fabbrica Tessuti Elastici Besana -- Italian small business saves Eur 30,000 by implementi...

On the cusp of launching Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, and Lotus Notes and Domino 8, IBM will host an on-line executive panel session to discuss these pending releases. Attend this panel to hear IBM executives Mike Rhodin, Ken Bisconti, and Jeff Schick discuss these exciting new products. Jus...

IBM released pricing and packaging information today about IBM Lotus Connections. The announcement indicates the planned electronic general availability date is June 29, 2007. IBM Lotus Connections V1.0 empowers users to share and refine innovative ideas and helps you execute tasks more quickly by...

A retrospective in honor of this weekend's 25th anniversary party for Lotus...For the Loti, the old days were a time when Lotus was one of the hottest software companies around -- and an exceptionally pleasant place to earn a living. Benefits and perks that were unusually generous for the 1980s and...

Several weeks ago, Lotus Support announced a series of new "Best Practices" guides for Notes/Domino. The new Lotus Support blog indicates that six additional guides have been published in the last few weeks...and I'm going to shamelessly steal their table: Domino Best Practices Date published...

IT-Director.com has an entry from Dale Vile, Research Director at Freeform Dynamics. His article covers the new Lotus products such as Connections, and IBM's efforts to bring these to market.[E]arly indications are that the significant R&D investment IBM has made in the areas we have be...

Just catching up on my case study reading... Catholic Life Insurance -- Domino Utility Server Express for content management Hospitales Nisa -- Notes/Domino for mail and quality management Meggle Group -- Notes/Domino migration from Groupwise for messaging and CRM from GEDYS Intraware Oxford Chemi...

Now this is really cool... There's a ton of "old Lotus" stuff on there, and it takes the paradigm of a museum into the online world really effectively (named "collections", visiting hours)....just needs a "gift shop" now. In the process of some house spring cleaning, I just came across the vid...

A whole web page of content covering today's newly announced Lotus Messaging and Collaboration Express starter packs. There's lots more, too, including a flyer and the channel announcement, which will be posted on Tuesday (the 1st). Visit ibm.com/lotus/smb for more details, or directly on the ge...

IBM PartnerWorld starts up live today in St. Louis, and there's a lot of Lotus lovin' on tap for this event. Here are some things to watch for out of the gate...I'll add links and updates later today. First, aside from a keynote from Sam Palmisano, ZZ Top will be there. What more could you ask fo...

Man are there a lot of upcoming big Notes/Domino events. Wish I could do them all, but I'm running out of pages in my passport... The Scottish Notes Users Group meeting is coming up next week. Great stuff on the agenda. The Kelros customer case study sounds very interesting... The Irish Lotus U...

As you might have heard over at Adam Gartenberg's blog, Sametime 7.5.1 is now shipping, with a host of new goodies. I know a lot of you are looking for the trial version -- that's planned to be posted in about three weeks. You can also find tons of detail on the updated website on ibm.com/lotus/st...

Lotus has launched a new ISV initiative, including a new section of the website (partnerwithlotus) and the IBM Collaborative Application Development Forum.Whether you are currently an IBM Business Partner, or looking at joining our community, the IBM Collaboration Continuum (detailed below) is for y...

Australia's Griffith University deploys Sametime...In an effort to facilitate collaboration with third parties, Griffith University in Queensland has started a messaging and groupware upgrade for its 6000 staff and postgraduate research students. The university's manager of identity and messaging...

There are some recurring themes that I hear when I talk to customers about Lotus, Notes/Domino, and the marketplace. One that comes up frequently is a view that Lotus is "nowhere" in the SMB market, and need to do things differently to gain more share in that space. I often point out in response t...

A balanced view of the opportunity to take social networking into the business environment. IBM's Steve Mills and Alistair Rennie are quoted, along with Gartner and IDC. Here's Mills:IBM is stopping short of entering the consumer market, however. Steven A. Mills , the IBM senior vice president and...

Eleven cities upcoming for Lotus open labs events in May/June...Lotus Open Labs is an education experience for customers, business partners and IBMers. It is a chance to sit down at a PC and "test-drive" software that you don't have or play with features of a product in a controlled environment. We...

Earlier today, Rob Novak announced the 2007 editions of Collaboration University. Did I say editions? Why yes, I did! This year, there are two flavours of CU, each held in two locations. Looking for CU for Quickr and Sametime? CU2007 will cover Quickr/Sametime in Kansas City and London events...

As Lotusphere Comes to You events continue, Lotus has also started to take the event virtual. Several presentations are available for download, and live presentations will be delivered in a series of webinars, starting with Sametime next week. Cool stuff. Link: Lotusphere Comes to You Online...

This article is cool both as a trip down memory lane, but also as validation of one's geek cred. I count having used more than half of these products, including an absolute mandatory load of PC Tools DOS every time I booted my Zenith 8088, being physically ill after playing Doom for the first tim...

No April Fool's...Rob Novak announces an exciting component of Lotus Quickr 8 on his blog:IBM has contracted with Design Partner SNAPPS to accelerate the development of eleven new templates ("placetypes" in Lotus Quickr terms) that will be available free to licensed Lotus Quickr users. Each of them...

The developerWorks Lotus security page lists a few new technotes -- a Domino Web Access cross-site scripting issue, and LDAP and IMAP buffer overflow issues. All issues were fixed in Domino 6.5.6 and Domino 7.0.2 or 7.0.2 FP1....

One IBM System i to do it all...3Com and IBM have pulled together a converged set of IP telephony, email, messaging, and business apps, all running on IBM's System-i -- the AS400, as it used to be called. The duo say it allows Lotus Sametime users to make voice calls by clicking on IM contacts, fo...

Sounds like Lotus Connections is coming in the right market space at the right time...It's all about integration and security," said Oliver Young, an analyst at the Cambridge, Mass.-based research firm. "They trust Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and SAP. They're running half of their enterprise applications...

The last planned maintenance release for Notes/Domino 6.5.x, release 6.5.6, is scheduled for later today. This is primarily a bug fix release, but it also includes 6.5 support for Lotus Notes access for SAP Solutions. No end of service date has been set for Notes/Domino 6.5. After the 6.5.6 main...

Last week, vowe wrote about a request to IBM to donate some Lotus Notes licenses to Sternenbrücke children's hospice in Hamburg, Germany. Unfortunately, the original request was turned down. One week later, after some a few e-mails, vowe's follow-up has good news (translated):The Lotus boss in Ge...

We had a really successful event today at the IBM offices in Petach Tivka. OK, so it took me 70 minutes by taxi to get there (vs. a 15 minute ride back), but no matter. Over 100 customers and partners attended, very good turnout. The local team made a deliberate decision to bill the event with...

CRN's Barbara Darrow blogs about an upcoming Lotus "reunion"...If you miss Lotus--well its parties anyway--there's a doozy coming up. On May 12, some venerable alums are hosting a soiree on the River Charles. The Hyatt actually. So get yourself a ticket (They're not cheap at 100 clams.) For that y...

Different regions take different approaches to "Lotusphere Comes to You" events....To underscore the user-friendly message, the MC at the Auckland event, where the atmosphere was decidedly upbeat, played the comedian, and speakers threw out T-shirts and other goodies to the audience, as Jonathan Ste...

Lotus Support has published a series of technotes documenting key Notes/Domino best practices. Great stuff!Below is a list of articles that every Notes/Domino application designer, administrator, and IT manager should read, regardless of their responsibilities. In addition, the following links take...

I suppose this needs a bit of an irony tag vs. my previous posting... anyway, if your organization is upgrading or testing Windows Vista, IBM has now published a technote related to running Lotus Notes on Vista.What versions of Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino Administrator and Lotus Domino Designer will s...

(Note: I wrote this on Friday, didn't get around to uploading the presentation until Sunday evening...thus the date/time on the posting. ERB) After three straight days of presenting the overall Lotus story, I've been thinking a lot about the messages that are in the Lotusphere Comes to You keynote...

Bob Balaban has posted a guest blog on Rocky's lotusgeek.com. Bob is looking for feedback on the use of the LSX Toolkit for Notes/Domino: (edited for clarity in the quote)We may really have an opportunity to "fix" the LSX Toolkit . I'd like to know a few things: 1. Who is using some version of...

None other than Bill Buchan is a co-speaker here at Triangle's Lotusphere Comes to You event today. Before the day kicked off, he showed me the registration database for the May Irish Lotus Users Group event. There are now over 150 registered delegates!!! (= "attendees" for Americans) They ar...

A topic I was asked about during Lotusphere was sub-capacity licensing for Domino. The license terms for Lotus Domino require that you license based on the number of processor value units associated with the server hardware you run Domino on. Increasingly, because of virtualization techniques or...

For over a dozen years, Lotus has connected with a community of business partners through a Notes discussion database called the Partner Forum. As described on the "communities" section of IBM developerWorks:The Partner Forum is a peer-to-peer discussion forum for IBM Business Partners who are focu...

Canadian publication IT Business takes a look at the Connections and Quickr announcements coming out of Lotusphere... They also got favourable marks from Mark Durst, president of Interchange Solutions of Markham, Ont., a Lotus solutions provider that makes Salesplace, a CRM plug-in for Lotus Notes....

A press release on the wire today...1150 users...To meet the needs of Kofola's rapidly growing employee base, the company needed to purchase a customized IT solution for its internal networks to facilitate highly secure sharing of sensitive documents and operational information and fast communicatio...

A very impressive third Irish Lotus Notes User Group has been announced for 24-25 May 2007 in Dublin. I wish I could attend again, as Paul Mooney, Eileen Fitzgerald, and everyone else have put together a fantastic agenda. It's so big, they've expanded it to two days. Look at all these great speak...

Check out the latest video from Lotus marketing......

I didn't get a chance to cover this announcement from yesterday due to a bit of a 24-hour-bug....IBM has a new open client offering that runs on Linux, Microsoft Windows and, later this year, the Apple Macintosh, and which is supported by services from IBM, Red Hat and Novell. ... "This is a cross...

vowe reports (auf Deutsch) that edcom has sold out their third edcom Nachlese, coming up this week in Munich. I spoke at the 2005 edition of this conference, and it's only gotten bigger and better since. The speakers are among the top technical experts in the German-speaking countries, and the att...

Subject says it all...Stuart has created a great source for early information about Quickr....We will aim to cover: * news, gossip and announcements relating to Quickr (and its predecessor Lotus Quickplace) * technical information (as details become available) that will aid adoption and implementati...

Susan Bulloch has posted a ton of additional information about the upcoming daylight savings time issues and how they can affect Notes over on www.notesgoddess.net. She's got links to downloadable agents, Blackberry-related information, and more. Over on Dominoblog.com, Rob Ingram has posted links...

A provocative headline -- but a great article, with another analyst confirming Lotus's position back on offense...The key message that I drew from Lotusphere is that Lotus really does seem to be getting some significant traction in the market. There is a mindset among many in the messaging and colla...

Alan alerted me to several interesting job postings from the Notes and Domino development teams.... Software Engineer - Eclipse/SWT Software Engineer - Calendaring/Scheduling Senior Software Engineer - Domino performance Senior Software Engineer - Domino availability Advisory QE Engineer - Domino...

Somewhere in the midst of Lotusphere, the Domino server development team asked me if I could help get the word out on their survey. The team is very interested in gathering "real-world" data about how you run your Domino environment. Conveniently, Kathleen McGivney posted the Domino administrati...

Roberto has recovered from jet lag enough to contribute some additional insight into Lotus Connections on the "yellow is the new black" group blog...The announcement was well received by the Lotusphere attendees and by the analysts, but I have the feeling that it has not been fully understood by eve...

Zoli Erdos encapsulates the discussion all over the blogosphere about IBM's entry into social networking software:Group-thinking, collaboration is as important as ever, not only to enable individuals co-create better, but also, as a secondary effect to preserve knowledge - should the individual leav...

...but I am really, really proud of what the Lotus team accomplished in 2006, especially the last quarter....

A new 14-page brochure highlighting the success many companies have had from adopting Lotus Notes and Domino is now available. Some great customers in there like DaimlerChrysler, HSBC, and Fujifilm. Check it out!...

Tony Patton takes a look at various integration methods between Lotus Domino and MS SharePoint...Recently, we received a call from a client about migrating existing Domino data to a new SharePoint installation. It was a questionable proposal, given the client's large Domino installation. We asked qu...

A very detailed interview with Lotus general manager Mike Rhodin. Mike covers a lot of ground, including the Notes 7.0.2 release, plans for 2007, objectives for the Notes/Domino 8 release, how developers and IT professionals can get excited about Lotus, and new technologies such as social networkin...

I got a note the other day from the nice people at Texxi, letting me know that their business is running on Notes/Domino. Pretty cool stuff -- their system lets taxi passengers aggregate themselves for shared rides, yet reap the benefit of having an on-demand service. They feel like it is an esp...

Rocky picked this up last week, but since some seem to think it's unusual to see Outlook users migrate to Notes, I thought I'd highlight it here:Soon, the airline will roll out IBM Corp.'s Lotus Notes groupware to its sales operation in the U.S. and Canada, which had previously been using Microsoft...

Proud parents Bruce and Nathan have both pinged me that today is the fifth anniversary of when they started OpenNTF.org. Wow! There is no question that OpenNTF has been a hugely positive influence on the Lotus Notes marketplace and community. OpenNTF applications have had thousands of download...

In my e-mail today -- An e-mail from a customer (via a partner) asking if the rumor is true that IBM is going to stop supporting the Notes client after release 8. No, the rumor is not true. IBM has made public commitments to two subsequent releases after that. There's a whitepaper that has be...

The official release date is a couple of weeks away, but starting today, you can download Notes 7.0.2 for Macintosh. Background and details in this lotus.com interview with Mike Mottola and Jason Dumont:Mottola reports that Mac customers in the Lotus Notes 7.0.2 Beta program have provided tremendou...

Over the last 45 days, I've met with over 100 Canadian customers and business partners across Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, and Calgary. This morning here in Calgary even surprised me -- we had about 10 more people turn up than had registered for the event. I always learn something from the Q&am...

Another merger/acquisition story goes in favor of Lotus Notes...Microsoft's Exchange collaboration platform will no longer be used by Amalgamated Holdings (AHL), as the diversified Australian company has started standardising its operations on IBM's rival software Lotus Notes. ... "Half the busines...

Just a reminder, I'll be speaking at IBM-hosted customer events this week in Vancouver on Tuesday afternoon/evening, Victoria on Wednesday afternoon, and Calgary on Thursday morning. I have heard from several readers who I look forward to meeting this week. For details on location and to RSVP, sen...

The Domino team blog features a new article with some long-sought details about the new features in Domino 8:Today, we start a series of reports on some of the new features of Domino 8 to whet your appetite to learn more (plug - to get you all to come to Lotusphere). We'll begin with an overview of...

Always good to see such positive case studies come from the "day jobs" of bloggers in the community....Warren Elsmore, Technical Director of BE Systems, explains: "With clustering, Norbord could run Lotus Domino across a number of servers, to improve load balancing. This would help ensure high avail...

IBM developerWorks: Lotus has its second Domino-based weblog going...This blog is intended to focus on the quality and consumability of software in general, and on IBM Workplace Portal and Collaborative (WPLC) software in particular. "WPLC" covers all Lotus branded software plus WebSphere Portal. Th...

Fans of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" methodology will be pleased to see the GTD and Lotus Notes implementation guide. I know that many GTD fans find that GTD and Notes go hand-in-hand, now there's a guide to doing it. Eric says:If you use Lotus Notes and the GTD methodology, you'll be pleas...

Over 800 pages of knowledge and wisdom, for those organizations consolidating, considering a migration, and examining the future in collaboration:This IBM Redbook presents the strategic and market benefits of IBM Lotus Domino over Microsoft Exchange and provides an overview of the tools and strategi...

Nice win from down under...Monash University has selected IBM Lotus software to improve collaboration for its 60,000 staff, students and researchers around the world. ... "Our researchers use a variety of computing platforms and operating systems. All the systems we looked at had robust messaging a...

One of the interesting thoughts that came out of Jake Howlett's twin postings last week was the sense of being "stuck" that was expressed by a number of the comments. The feeling expressed by some is frustration, perceiving that the tools haven't evolved to meet their needs, or that IBM isn't liste...

Quickplace has always been a great product to share, a point that SNAPPS is making by announcing three free, open-source placetypes for Quickplace 7:SNAPPS is pleased to offer IBM Lotus QuickPlace customers a series of free, open-source templates for QuickPlace 7! In our role as the official IBM Des...

Colin Williams has the right idea...I shook his hand and introduced myself. I then explained that Notes has a 'new mail' button, a place to write some words and a 'send' button...much like any other email system. He shut up, left the department and we all cracked up! A week later and now the guy is...

Since I enrolled about 30 edbrill.com readers into the Notes 7 beta for Macintosh, wanted to make sure all were aware that there is an updated beta build of the Notes 7.0.2 Mac client now posted. Beta sites who have downloaded report that it is much faster than the first beta (and also faster than...

A couple of weeks ago, I delivered a presentation on The History of Lotus Notes at the e-Office event in the Netherlands. After posting a link online, many of you provided feedback that will help me improve the presentation. In the meantime, I also received some interesting e-mails. Both Alan L...

Check out today's new Taking Notes podcast, an interview with IBM Lotus general manager Mike Rhodin. Aside from denying that Tickle Me Elmo will be the comedian at Lotusphere 2007, the guys covered a lot of ground with Rhodin. Everything from NSFDB2, Notes on Linux, "Nomad", SOA, Lotus Expeditor,...

Yet another blog has appeared on IBM developerWorks -- but this one is different. The developerWorks Lotus team blog, authored by Tara Hall, Craig Lordan, and the rest of the "notes.net" team, is now online. What makes it different? It's running on the Domino 7.0.2 blogging template. Why is that...

Looks like version 1.00.03.0000 was posted a couple of weeks ago. Note: A bug is preventing me from posting the link in the main blog entry, see the comments for the link. (Thanks, Fred)...

e-Office ran a top-notch event on Tuesday in Maarssen, Netherlands, to celebrate fifteen years that they've been in the Notes/Domino business. Congrats to them on such a milestone. As I mentioned a few times, my job was to present on the history of Notes, as well as a roadmap to Hannover and beyo...

In building my "History of Notes" presentation for today's e-Office event, one thing that struck me is how inconsistent Lotus has been about adding incremental features to Notes releases. It's an issue I'm thinking about a lot not just because of the past, but because of the future. According to t...

I was only sort of serious when I mentioned one of the R5 easter eggs the other day....but voila! Thanks to Bradley in New Zealand, I've got my screen shot: Funny, too, since Dwight Morse just rejoined the Notes product management team :-) Join the fun, if you, too, still have R5 around: Elv...

Nice quote:This morning I upgraded our domino server. It wasn't planned but I needed to process some of the Windows updates and reboot, so I figured that if I had any spare time, I'd upgrade Domino. ... The upgrade itself took less than 10 minutes and was faster to implement than the standard Wind...

Bruce Elgort asked me the other day if there was any shot of getting Mike Rhodin to do an interview for the Taking Notes Podcast. Well, I asked, and the answer was, "I'm game". While the date for the podcast is being worked out, Taking Notes is soliciting ideas for questions to ask Mike. He won't...

About 30 customers/partners at this morning's user group meeting in New York. I only learned a few days ago that there is another Lotus-related event going on in NYC tomorrow, so we might have had a little bit of event fatigue. But if you didn't make it and you are in this area, I'd be interested...

NECN TV (New England Cable News) interviewed Lotus Notes chief architect Jeff Eisen last week about Notes 7.0.2. Check out Jeff's in-studio appearance on Boston.com. Nice job, Jeff! Taking your work on the road is nothing new- IBM Lotus, is offering Lotus Notes, which stores documents, pictures an...

Matthew White announces a really cool defect-tracking application built on Domino using the Dojo framework...If you're a Domino developer, then it may be worth a look as pretty much the whole site has been developed using the Dojo framework. This ranges from the block layout (positioning isn't done...

Reminder that I'll see a bunch of you on Wednesday morning, October 18, 9 AM, at IBM / 590 Madison Avenue, New York. Full details on the MNYNUG website...

Lotus's Ken Bisconti writes for Mass High Tech....but instant messaging continues to grow in use among workers as they communicate with one another, and with customers and vendors. Here are some practical tips for using instant messaging most effectively in a professional setting:Helpful reminders....

I'll add this link to my overall 7.0.2 entry, but I thought there was a good quote in it worth highlighting separately:IBM also believes these features will help customers innovate more easily through more user-friendly and cross-platform collaboration. "Customers are asking for the ability to lev...

The official press announcement of Lotus Notes/Domino 7.0.2 availability is out goes out later today. I'll add the link once it's live. Alan Lepofsky and I have done many press interviews about the 7.0.2 release over the last few days, so I'm expecting to see some coverage in the various trade pub...

Bruce Elgort tipped me off earlier today to a big announcement at Saleforce.com's conference...emphasis mine:Lotus Notes Edition -- Responding to customer interest, Salesforce SFA will feature Lotus Notes integration so users can easily collaborate across platforms. Salesforce Notes Edition will fe...

Rod Boothby claims to have figured out the magic recipe for migrating Notes applications:I have heard outrageous estimates for the cost of moving off Lotus Notes, should a large company want to switch. The problem is that companies have built a great deal of information into their Lotus Notes databa...

IBM developerWorks has just added a new newsletter focused on all things Lotus. The newsletter highlights new articles, demonstrations, upcoming webcasts, and events. Sign up at developerWorks: Newsletters...

After the whirlwind tour through ANZ last month, I had several requests for copies of my presentation. We could (or did) post them on each user group's website, but that wouldn't reach everyone. So the Lotus team asked me if I could post the slides somewhere else more accessible, like perhaps on e...

An in-depth view of some of the new directions for Lotus software....IBM is building social networking tools into its collaboration software in an effort to bring the concepts of Web 2.0 and online communities inside corporations. In the coming weeks, IBM's Lotus division will announce updates des...

The Notes/Domino 7.0.2 downloads are being posted throughout the day today. I'll have a lot more to say about this great new version soon...in the meantime, go get it :-)...

Out in draft form, 160 pages of detailed information on how to optimize your Domino server...This IBM Redpaper discusses a best practices approach to Performance Tuning in Domino 7. It addresses both how to approach the science of performance tuning in a structured, logical manner, while also provid...

Burton Group's Mike Gotta read my posting about recent meetings with Australian CIOs/CTOs, giving some context for the kinds of customer discussions he is hearing about in the context of moving e-mail systems. Mike suggests that buzz-wise, we're behind in getting people to look at our new release (...

Good news -- the Notes 7.0.2 Macintosh beta will begin later today. Participants in the Notes/Domino maintenance release beta program will be contacted with details on where/when to download it. Several Macintosh "power users" within IBM have been running this in production for weeks. They repo...

IBM has published a sponsored research paper which analyzes interviews conducted with 100 Notes/Domino customers on why they have chosen to use or continue to use Notes over Microsoft Exchange. The paper, "E-mail and Collaboration Deliver Business Value", is freely downloadable from ibm.com. It's...

Unfortunately, Colin wasn't able to join the Notes user group meeting in Wellington last week, but he did attend the Notes & Domino 7 upgrade seminar a couple of days later.Wednesdays seminar...featured a passionate Lotus Notes and Domino guru in the form of Wayne Boxall from IBM Australia. His...

Maureen updates on progress with the Domino Designer in Eclipse effort...What you're seeing is a real Eclipse navigator, showing the design elements in a Notes nsf, and the Eclipse navigator is active and opening up the Notes editors for the listed design elements. Looks cool, Maureen......

There sure was a lot going on over the last 10 days, and I didn't get a chance to link or blog it all. Take a look at... Sametime 7.5 launch materials. Offerings manager Adam Gartenberg has a whole bunch on the launch, including the first-person perspective on the launch event and panel discussi...

Lotus has expanded its customer reference submissions process, and now your organization can self-nominate to be considered for a reference or success story. Simply click on over to the IBM Software Client Reference Program website, sign in, and follow the instructions. For me, the most important...

What a nonstop day. Some really cool meetings with a variety of organizations all over Wellington. Somewhere in there, managed a great salmon lunch at Pravda (Russian theme, no Russian food). After the last meeting, things went straight to Hell -- Hell Pizza, that is ("we have gas"!). This fanta...

Congratulations and thanks, mates, to my colleagues/mates here in Oz for doing a great job with my schedule this week. The pace was almost unbearable at times, but I'd say every meeting I had this week was worthwhile -- and then some. Looking at the stack of business cards collected from the week,...

I don't think the fire marshall would have been happy with the turnout for last night's Lotus user group meeting in Melbourne.... The room was buzzing from the outset, as a really good article about Lotus had run in the Financial Review (Aussie equivalent of the Wall Street Journal) yesterday,...

eWeek reviews the Lotus Notes on Linux client, as well as the Nitix small business server offering that includes Lotus Domino.IBM Lotus Notes on Linux delivers the key functionality, security, replication and rich message content found on the Windows and Mac OS Notes clients. Users will likely appr...

3 AM jetlag, time to make the weblog... A great first two days of this Aussie trip. I'll get some photos uploaded in the next day or two, but here are the highlights: Brisbane's "Ed Brill live" events drew a combined 80+ customer and partner attendees (we originally expected 30). We covered a...

My colleagues in Denmark are taking their message to the streets, in more ways than one. An eight-page full colour insert appeared in the Danish newspaper Borsen last week. The insert includes product news, case studies, and the smiling faces of the Danish sales and marketing crew (along with full...

Just finished listening to Bruce Elgort and Julian Robichaux's latest Taking Notes podcast. Episode 31 features guests Eric Mack and Alan Lepofsky, with the discussion mostly focused on why some people "get Notes" and others don't. They talk about ways to help evangelize Notes -- notably, focus on...

Two different bloggers, two different thoughts, but a similar notion...that selling the benefits of Notes & Domino is actually pretty easy when you get off defense and show what the product can do. First, Eric Mack: How to save a Lotus Notes customer:I told them that I thought they should swi...

I regularly monitor Blogdigger and Technorati for mentions of Lotus Notes, and today's feeds snared this from desparoz On The Go:The email system I use at work is the wonderful Lotus Notes. I say wonderful, because IMHO Lotus Notes is one of the most powerfully GTD-friendly email systems for the pr...

Let me start this with an important comment about tone -- In no way is this blog entry meant to be disrespectful. I was in Louisville, Kentucky, for a few hours today, in a couple of different meetings. The second was a "round table" format with half a dozen Lotus customers (15 people) from the re...

While I still don't speak a word of Brazilian Portuguese (OK, maybe ten words), I can't help but be impressed by this effort: Check it out at www.mudeparalotus.com.br...

For starters, the announcement is on a really cool URL: www.lotusenergizers.com/sydney . The inaugural meeting of the new Sydney users group will be Tuesday, 12 September, at 5:30 PM at IBM St. Leonard's. Come see how I'm handling jet lag on day two of my ten day ANZ tour. For those in Brisbane,...

When Paul Mooney and Bill Buchan submitted an abstract for a session called "Worst Practices" to Lotusphere 2006, I was a little nervous. Who wants to put a message in front of decision-makers, competitors, analysts that bad things can happen to good software? So, while I don't track manage that p...

Eric Mack has an excellent question, and it's the basis for so many of the Lotus community discussions in the last few weeks:David asked me what percentage of Lotus Notes I thought people who use Notes really "get." I proposed 20%. David said that in his experience it was less than 10%. I hope we ar...

There was tons of coverage of this week's announcement of a Linux version of the Lotus Sametime server, and Adam has it all in two posts on his blog. One article in particular got my attention....In June, IBM announced it is building links between Sametime and Microsoft's Outlook, Office and Share...

Rich Schwartz notes that in the six months that many of you in the Domino blogging community have been doing "Show n' Tell Thursdays", there have been over 340 blog entries posted under this tag. What a great community! Thank you all for sharing your expertise!...

Here's a small association getting huge benefits out of Domino, especially as compared to their old Exchange system:"Microsoft Exchange was unstable and inflexible," says Craig Haarmeyer, information services specialist at CCPOA. "And because it is proprietary and platform-dependent, we were limited...

The latest Taking Notes podcast is out, featuring IBM's Satwik Seshasai and SNAPPS' Rob Novak discussing plans for Lotus Quickplace 8. Lots of details on great new innovation. Listener Stu Downes says that Quickplace 8 intersects with Web 2.0 in his review of the podcast. Go check it out on takin...

SearchSAP reports on an AMR Research study examining the market dynamics around Microsoft & SAP's "Duet". According to the article, Duet is no slam dunk -- 35% of those surveyed have reservations about it, and only 29% have the ability to deploy it in their current environment. I smell upgrade...

The Salvation Army is expanding deployment of their Notes-based help desk to its international operations...Mark Calleran, The Salvation Army's chief information officer for the international headquarters says international compatibility was an important factor in the decision. 'We have 107,000 em...

An interesting discussion underway with my product management team. Domino added POP3 in R4.5 of the Notes server and and IMAP4 support in 4.6. In my experience, these protocols have limited use in the Domino environment.... the vast majority of mail client access is either via Notes, Domino Web A...

Alan and Rocky have already reported this, but it's way cool and you should check it out: an animated demo of Notes Access for SAP Solutions. I've been talking about this a lot with customers in the last few weeks. Even if you are not an SAP shop, you should check it out -- it is a great way to e...

A good case study on Catholic Charities Minneapolis/St. Paul and their use of Domino + Quickplace on IBM System i for 700 users plus an extranet...For example, IBM helped Catholic Charities develop card technology to assist thousands of homeless reclaim their identity. Known as the Community Card pr...

So last week's posting about an Exchange migration certainly stirred up a lot of commentary.... and it went in a lot of different directions. One of the more common thoughts was that Notes needs to be able to demonstrate more "out of the box" value....things you can do with Notes not just in abstra...

eWeek is celebrating their 25th anniversary by highlighting the top 25 products that defined personal computing over that 25 years. Lotus has two products on that list -- 1-2-3 and Lotus Notes. Great acknowledgement of the role Notes has played -- and plays -- in defining collaboration and knowled...

Reading Chicago Tribune coverage almost makes me homesick.... LOLWhen IBM introduced a version of Lotus Notes that runs on the desktop computers using the Linux operating system this month, it was a sign of confidence that open-source software is gaining market traction. Lotus Notes, the popular co...

Two more articles about the Lotus Notes for Linux announcement that are making the rounds, both by InfoWorld's Neil McAllister: Infoworld, Lotus Notes on Linux: Time to bite?:We're seeing the begininng of a concerted effort on the part of companies like IBM and Novell to challenge Windows for a pie...

David Vasta announces:On August 22, we will hold a special event in Denver. All day you will be able to receive hands-on education on some of the newest Lotus products. After the Open Labs session, please plan to attend the User Group meeting featuring Ed Brill.My first visit to Denver in 20 years.....

Federal Computer Week is reporting on a US Department of Defense contract for collaboration services...The Defense Information Systems Agency awarded the first of two Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) collaboration services contracts to IBM in a $17 million deal that calls for the company to pr...

Kansas City hey hey hey hey... The first technical training event focused exclusively on Lotus Sametime and Lotus Quickplace was announced yesterday. Collaboration University will feature expert IBM and industry speakers, covering deep technical information on these two products. This is defin...

Well the news was embargoed until two minutes ago (EDT), and CRN already has posted their story, so seeing as how I've been doing some of the press interviews on this, I might as well write about it.... On Monday, IBM is officially announcing Lotus Notes for Linux. A Notes 7 client running on a L...

My friend and colleague Tim Clark has been brainstorming some lab ideas for, well, this big conference that takes place in Florida every January...If there was a conference where you could take part in some hands on labs of a software nature, what would you want to see it look like. Not what co...

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Earlier today, Dell Inc. Japan announced several Notes/Domino-related service offerings. My colleague Terasaki-san sent the release (in Japanese), along with a machine translation provided by Excite. The translation indicates that Dell-J's new offerings are: "Domino to Domino migration serv...

You simply must check out Alan Lepofsky's presentation from the Lotus premium support seminar last week! Twenty awesome tips and tricks for end users to make better use of their Notes environment. Many of them have been covered by Alan separately on his blog, but this is a great aggregation of...

The marketing folks have posted several pages of new information about the 7.0.2 Notes/Domino release... Interview with Mike Mottola and Penny Scharfman, giving an overview of the release Details on the Notes on a USB memory stick install ("Nomad"), blog template, and RSS feed gene...

On this back-to-wok Monday, there's no question that the time in Dublin last week was worthwhile in terms of supporting the successful Irish user group meeting. Over 100 delegates -- 30% of whom were from outside of Ireland -- turned up for an incredible lineup of speakers. While it didn't hav...

We're heading into the final two breakout session timeslots of the day here at the ILUG in Dublin. Almost a hundred people turned out for this event, with attendees coming in from England, the Netherlands, Germany, and all over Eire. Good questions and interaction. Strong interest in "Nomad"...

Ferris's blog has a quick entry about their experience at the ILTF/DNUG conference last month....The strong attendance (500+) and support of IBM and dozens of third-party vendors demonstrate that Notes and Domino are doing well in the German market. We believe Germany is home to the second large...

I'm pleased to announce that IBM's support for next week's Irish Notes Users Group continues to grow...now with the addition of Steve Castledine to the list. I've asked Steve to demonstrate the Domino blogging template that will be shipping in 7.0.2 later this year...and which I'll be upgradi...

In the last week or ten days, I've been bombarded by requests from customers to provide the "Domino roadmap". And when something happens that often in that short of a period of time, one can guess where it's coming from -- the competition. "Ask Lotus whether you'll be able to run Domino in fiv...

Paul Mooney has been working day and night -- quite literally -- to make next week's second Irish Notes User Group meeting an impressive event. We've been chatting at all hours while this comes together. The event is free to attend, and IBM has even come to the party with sponsorship of a fre...

Coverage in the Manila Bulletin from the Lotusphere Comes to You event there a few weeks back...With this development, Lotus Software has opened up new markets for Lotus Notes and Domino. Ed Brill, Business Unit Executive, Worldwide Lotus Messaging Sales, IBM Software Group, said in hindsight...

It's quite ironic that I've been meaning to blog this topic for about a month. But here goes... I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of continuity and reliance. In IT we often talk about reliability, but why is it so important? Why do we expend so much energy on "disaster rec...

For weeks, Paul Mooney has been asking me to consider speaking at the next Irish Notes User Group meeting. No, I did the first one, I said. No, I have to be in Washington DC that week, I said. No, you have some amazing speakers lined up already, and don't need me, I said. Throw that all...

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ArsTechnica ran a story last week about the IBM productivity editors announcement. (Story link: IBM wants to take a bite out of Office). That's all fine, but if you want to see something fascinating, take a look at the Forum discussion. This makes slashdot look tame. Sample quotes: "Note...

Missed this in all of last week's news...IBM plans to add Baidu.com's hard-disk search technology in Lotus Notes as part of a technology partnership, the two companies announced Wednesday. Baidu's hard-disk search technology can be used to search for information in Chinese and English. Add...

SearchDomino's "Ask Chuck Connell" yesterday featured a frequently asked question, but the answer seems to have surprised a lot of people. Here's the question: "When Domino runs on a Microsoft server operating system, do we need a Windows Server Client Access License (CAL) for each Lotus Notes...

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More good news for the future of Lotus Notes applications...With today's announcement, IBM and RIM are exploring opportunities for customers to more easily extend these Web services directly to BlackBerry, redefining the boundaries of their SOA to include mobile access. Extending Web services to...

The Globe reports on yesterday's IBM announcement...oftware industry watchers said that introducing ODF to millions of Lotus Notes users might quickly establish it as a major alternative to the Microsoft document standard. ''When you're trying to get a standard started, the biggest problem is...

I knew Alexander was up to something when I saw him sitting quietly in the foyer after my session...So Hannover is Lotus Notes - and a lot more. It will grow from a plattform for collaborative applications to an open plattform for composite applications. For the first time in 16 years Lotus Note...

I've written this entry during the keynote from this week's DNUG/IBM Lotus Technical Forum event. Tons of information covered in ninety minutes, with breakout sessions to follow with even more detail. Sidebar note-to-self from the keynote: Don't flash vowe, his is bigger than mine. Mike Rhodin g...

During Admin2006, LotusUserGroup.org program director Libby Ingrassia recorded several podcast interviews with Loti, business partners, attendees. Several were posted yesterday, including one with me. Check them out on the LotusUserGroup.org site...

Looks like Ferris Research wins the "first with the news" coverage of today's IBM announcement (not yet on ibm.com) of IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions. From the press release (emphasis mine):IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions include new features to Lotus Notes rich client such...

Interested in helping write this one?This Redbook will outline the best practices for migrating from an MS Exchange 2000 / 2003 to Domino 7. It is intended for IT Architects, Messaging Administrators and business leaders in an organization looking to move from Exchange to Domino 7. Details on t...

Due to other commitments, I wasn't able to attend the Admin2006 keynote this morning here in Boston. If you weren't, either, and want to know what Mike Rhodin and Ron Sebastian talked about and showed, surf over to Chris Miller's live blog of the keynote. If you're at Admin2006, hopefully I...

John Roling, aka Greyhawk68, contributes this article to Intranet Journal. Great to see some exposure outside the core Notes/Domino community for OpenNTF projects such as DominoWiki, domBulletin, Blogsphere, etc. One clarification:IBM has really gotten the value of a business blog, and r...

I've been anxiously awaiting this posting to show up on the IBM jobs site...U.S. Microsoft SWAT Team works closely with CSSRs, Specialist SSRs, Competitive Messaging Specialists & other account team members to win in accounts where Microsoft Exchange or Sharepoint software is a threat (both...

A heck of a testimonial to investment protection. Eric's Domino server has been on the same piece of hardware so long, the product used to be called "Notes server" :What is remarkable is that this server has been running almost 24x7 for 11 years! I built this Windows NT server as our primary Do...

Quick trip to Detroit today, where I had 75 minutes on the agenda of the Detroit Notes Professionals meeting. I last met with this user group in August, 2003, but today's turnout was bigger than that last visit. My presentation, which I'll post somewhere in the next few days, covered near-te...

Yes, it's time for me to highlight another Mary Beth Raven blog entry... I've noted several times how much focus on the end-user is going into Notes "Hannover". In yesterday's entry, Mary Beth describes three fictional users that development has drummed up as their "design personae" (ok, t...

Today's event drew 360 attendees to the KLCC for Lotusphere Comes to You. As has been the case in the previous two stops, the mood was festive and the setup was fun. I was surprised to see that the local edition had some "lifestyle sponsors" -- TaylorMade and California Fitness. But that wa...

Leave it to Nathan to stir things up. :-) After "Hannover" UI guru Mary Beth Raven's first blog posting, Nathan Freeman opined:Lotus, please don't lose the plot on this. You need RADICAL simplification. And because you can't start stripping features, you need to do the next best thing -...

The day's not over yet, but I've got a few minutes to blog. About 300 here in Singapore today, an enthusiastic group for sure. The main stage was decorated as a boxing ring, and the metaphor carried throughout the day. Customers and partners I've spoken with throughout the day have been posit...

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Fantastic news: Mary Beth Raven has joined the ranks of IBM developerWorks bloggers. I've been encouraging the "Hannover" team to blog, as a way to reach customers in addition to their existing design review program, usability testing, and other outreach efforts. This is going to be good! ...

If you've been waiting for session information to decide on whether to attend next month's DNUG/IBM Lotus Technical Forum conference in Karlsruhe, Germany, wait no longer. The jumpstarts and keynotes, breakout sessions (day 1 and day 2) are now available. Sessions shaded in grey are present...

During the recent Lotusphere Comes to You tour, IBM's Ken Bisconti spoke with ComputerWorld New Zealand about the Notes/Domino marketplace..."Lotus Notes has 40,000 active customers across the world, and any idea that Notes is dead is a dead idea," says Ken Bisconti, vice president of IBM Workpl...

A good discussion of the business value of instant messaging, which focuses on Lotus Sametime as a knowledge tool. Note the prominence of Sametime in this story, further establishing IBM's market and mindshare leadership in this space.Mike Rhodin, IBM's general manager for Workplace, Portal and...

A couple of weeks ago, a nice guy (thanks, Paul) pointed out to me that the Wikipedia entry on Lotus Notes isn't all that wonderful.a representation of Notes. It has a bit of a technical go around programming, but nary a word on the types of applications built with all that stuff. The screens...

Short but good case study...Hotel building and refurbishment company Vascroft has rolled out Lotus Notes to support flexible working arrangements. Mitesh Vekaria, Vascroft's chief executive, said the system was already improving employee productivity by allowing mobile working, better calendari...

Rocky takes a break from geeking out on new Notes features...I am sure we all remember the "bad old days" - the time a few years ago when we, as a community, were completely unclear about the future of Notes/Domino, much less our own careers since many of us have worked soley on Notes/Domino and...

During a techtalk for Lotus business partners and IBMers yesterday, Domino product manager Rob Ingram was asked about the plan to support Domino on 64-bit Linux operating systems. Rob pointed the audience to technote 1231920, published a couple of weeks ago, which saysEffective with Domino 7....

The View's Admin2006 is a little over a month away, and I'm way behind in getting my presentation done. The session is called, "Lotus Notes 'Hannover' -- What It Means To You". Given the weight of the topic, there's a need for the right focus make sure the presentation hits the mark. The...

Interesting to see this is in the mainstream media even before the press release is posted on ibm.com...International Business Machines Corp. said it will roll out an aggressive strategy today to lure business customers away from rival Microsoft Corp., offering bounties of up to $20,000 to sales...

In one of my customer meetings this week, the subject of document locking came up. The customer had some questions about how this feature might benefit them in a particular application. To be honest, I had to pause a second. Document locking was a new feature in Notes/Domino 6... which seemed...

Mikkel Heisterberg totally gets it in terms of where Notes is going and some of the opportunities, and challenges, of Notes in the "Hannover" release (emphasis mine):Though supported it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to build the kinds of composite, networked applications that will b...

I did an interview with the lotus.com team recently, which is now posted. Some of the content admittedly sounds a little "fluffy", but there's some good stuff in there, too...But Brill finds the developer community is closing ranks behind the IBM/Lotus vision, which is the reason Microsoft is h...

A nice posting on the developerWorks:Lotus Notes/Domino 6/7 forum...We were due to start work on a release for R7 early next quarter, so I decided to have a "first look" at what the work would entail. After downloading and installing R7 - a process which went absolutely seamlessly - I dropped o...

The Notes "Hannover" development team is looking for input, and somehow I suspect a few of you can help with this one. Quote: In Hannover, we would like to fix the most egregious Notes error messages. To qualify as "most egregious," they should probably: - Be seen by business end users (like Sa...

At last week's Lotusphere Comes to You in Norway, my colleagues started the day with a compelling set of customer quotes. Some very satisfied Notes customers--and they're not afraid to say so. The local team translated the quotes into English for me...here they are: Orkla 17,000 No...

We're only eight weeks away from the 2nd joint IBM and Deutsche Notes Users Group event in Germany, coming up in Karlsruhe on 15-17 May. Registration is now open. Again this year, the first day of IBM sessions -- "IBM Lotus Future In Sight Day" -- is available to all at no charge. The full...

If you're not reading Alan's Notes hints and tips blog, you should be....yesterday's hint is one of my favorites. It's easier to enter extended characters in Notes than any other Windows software...When entering text, Lotus Notes allows you to enter what is called "extended characters". There...

Stephan Wissel wrote a most excellent Show n Tell Thursday entry last week, discussing a half-dozen of the best atrributes of Lotus Domino, including: Self-containment Robustness Scalability and platform choice Security Extensibility Low cost of ownership and IBM's commitmentDefini...